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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Scotland’s Place in the World and the Problem with British Isolationism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 3rd 2012 Europe has been in the headlines in the last two weeks. There was Salmond’s little legal controversy on EU matters, followed by David Cameron’s problems with his backbenchers on Europe, while some Labour politicians charged Ed Miliband with opportunism for siding with Tory Euro-sceptics. If it is possible to rise above Scots insularity and petty partisanship which we have seen in the last week, it would be helpful to note the wider European and international dimension in which the Scottish self-government

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Michael Marra and the Search for the Soul of Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 27th 2012 Scotland has had its moments in the last week: the drama of the SNP NATO vote, the revelations of the EU legal advice, and the tragic death of singer-songwriter Michael Marra. What if anything do politics, legal manoeuvrings and matters of life and death have in common? To take the last first, Michael Marra was a unique talent and voice, a gentle, unassuming man who spoke of his native Dundee, of Scotland and of the world in a quiet yet uncompromising manner which

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How the World of Eton Sees Scotland and Scottish Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 20th 2012 The name of Eton resonates down through English tradition and privilege: from the Dave ‘n’ Boris show to the wider return of the old Etonians across public life. It has produced nineteen British Prime Ministers and a host of Scottish and British iconoclasts and radicals from Tam Dalyell and Neal Ascherson to John Maynard Keynes and George Orwell. Eton was an august setting for debating Scottish independence in the week of the Scottish and UK Government’s agreement. On the same day the

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