Scotland as an Idea and Place of Substance Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 29th 2012 It has been a tumultuous year, across Europe, the world, and in its own way for Scotland. It was the year that the independence referendum was agreed, of the collapse and rebirth of Rangers FC, and the continued decline of the British establishment and public trust in it. At the year’s end, the Radical Independence Conference brought together a new generation of twentysomething activists, Creative Scotland parted company with much of the arts world (and lost as a result two of its senior figures), and

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Does Scotland really want to do something about inequality? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 22nd 2012 Scotland thinks and acts left. The complexity of evidence on values and policies shows that Scotland isn’t that much different from the rest of the UK. But the dominant account of Scotland is centre-left, or even left, in how it sees and positions itself, and how it votes. Such a political culture not surprisingly spends a large amount of time articulating its concerns on social justice. We see ourselves as more egalitarian and less hierarchical than our Southern neighbours and maybe even more Nordic

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Time to have an equality for all citizens Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 15th 2012 The issue of same sex marriage has become a major political controversy both sides of the border. Both the Scottish and UK Governments are planning to legislate and at the same time try to balance freedom and equality of sexual orientation with freedom of religious expression. There are huge differences between Scotland and England and Wales. The Cameron Government once viewed same sex marriage as an easy way of proving its liberal modernising credentials, but now finds itself enmeshed in bitter Tory wars. They

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Growing Up with the Idea of Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 8th 2012 The Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s intervention this week on the case for Scottish independence attracted significant attention and comment. It has been rightly seen as a maturing moment and evolution of the debate both in content and tone, recognised by the responses of Brian Wilson in ‘The Scotsman’ and Alex Massie in ‘The Spectator’ online. Sturgeon’s intervention caused Wilson to call on politicians to ‘listen rather than talk. Listen and understand. Listen and be inspired’. Massie wrote that, ‘Almost every unionist in Scotland

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Manifesto for a Culture of Self-Determination Gerry Hassan National Collective/Open Democracy, December 5th 2012 Introduction: Scottish Politics and Language In the last few weeks people have become increasingly aware, and to some extent concerned, about the rising prevalence of a culture of abuse, insult and invective in Scottish politics around and associated with the independence referendum. There is a longer story to this, of the failure and dogma of Labour unionism, of the SNP’s adoption of command and control politics, and of an embryonic self-government movement unable so far to find full form and voice. At the same time

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What are Modern Scotland’s Three Defining Stories? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, December 4th 2012 What are Scotland’s defining stories at this crucial point in our history? Many of our traditional accounts are suffering from exhaustion, discredited or hollowed out, from the collectivist dreams of salvation from socialism to the belief in religious redemption, both with their sense of either being damned or saved. There are arguably three pivotal accounts present at this time: the Scotland of the egalitarian impulse, the Scotland of the democratic intellect and the nation and culture of popular sovereignty. This is not the reality of contemporary

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Michael Forbes, Donald Trump and the Unpredictable Scotland Emerging Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 1st 2012 The Scots have a strange and often perplexing relationship with those in authority and power. Sometimes we damn them and at other times we choose to believe their official story. More often than we show a lack of curiosity in scrutinising and challenging authority. Instead, there is a deafening silence of the Scots across large acres of public life, in conferences, gatherings and fora which represent ‘civic Scotland’. Michael Forbes has been a huge exception to this general rule. The Aberdeenshire farmer who stood

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Time for a Different BBC Scotland (and STV Too!) Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 24th 2012 The BBC is in crisis. BBC Scotland faces significant job cuts, a strike ballot of staff, and the prospect of industrial action. At a UK level, the BBC has hardly been out of the news in the last few weeks. There has been the Jimmy Savile scandal, a substantial payout to Lord McAlpine, and George Entwistle having to resign as Director General. The BBC’s problems go much deeper than these immediate problems north and south of the border, and touch on what it is

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The Problem with the ‘No’ Men Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 17th 2012 The debate on the future of Scotland’s constitutional status has many legitimate views: pro-union, pro-independence, and the middling Scotland sitting uneasily in-between. In the last two weeks, the tenor of part of the debate has begun to change. Alistair Darling, head of the ‘No’ camp, in the John P. Mackintosh lecture, one of Scottish Labour’s few post-war cerebral figures, has talked of independence as ‘the road to serfdom’. Darling stated that ‘an independent Scotland would rejoin the UK’ and continued, with a mindset of simplistic separatism, predicting

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A Different Creative Culture after Managerialism and Paternalism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 10th 2012 The last few months have seen a gathering storm about Creative Scotland, the leading arts and culture organisation in the country. A letter signed by more than one hundred of our leading artists and cultural practitioners, signalled their concerns and called out for a change of direction. The breadth of opposition, ranging across generations, political views and art forms, uniting independence supporting James Kelman with pro-union advocates such as James MacMillan, cannot be easily ignored. But what is left unsaid is the wider context,

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