Margaret Thatcher

Scotland needs to learn the lessons of how we defeated Margaret Thatcher Gerry Hassan The National, 28 December 2021 Margaret Thatcher looms large in the history of modern Scotland. Her minority rule of Scotland, her dogma and indifference to hardship and suffering, her English nationalism wrapped in the flag of the Union Jack: all this and more irritated an overwhelming majority of Scots. She did change history here, although not in ways she intended. She underlined that the old union of compromise was broken; she weakened the strength of the unionist case; and she was a handmaiden in creating the

Continue Reading Scotland needs to learn the lessons of how we defeated Margaret Thatcher

What are we talking about when we talk about Thatcherism? Gerry Hassan The National, August 10th 2021 Boris Johnson was at it last week. Upon visiting Scotland he was yet again causing mischief and being offensive, becoming the story in a way which did not do him any favours, nor the cause of the Tory Party and union, or indeed, the office of Prime Minister of the UK. This was, in this case, his remarks celebrating and making light of Thatcher’s closure of numerous coal mines in the 1980s – which resulted in a great big stushie across Scotland and

Continue Reading What are we talking about when we talk about Thatcherism?

The state of the union and independence after Johnson’s Jaunt Gerry Hassan Sunday National, January 31st 2021 Boris Johnson came to Scotland last week: much trailed and talked about but certain to have no lasting effect. This was the week where a once-revered Scottish institution announced it had fallen on hard times. Once popular with Edinburgh ladies of a certain age and the middle classes who believed that they had a refined taste and lifestyle; the similarities between Jenners department store on Princes Street, Edinburgh and the Scottish Tories, are many. This illustrates the long-term collapse of the institutions of

Continue Reading The state of the union and independence after Johnson’s jaunt

The Empire Strikes Back: Being Prisoners of the Past in Britain Gerry Hassan Sunday National, May 3rd 2020 Next week sees another historical milestone with the commemoration of VE (Victory in Europe) Day on 8 May - the 75^th anniversary of the defeat of fascism and Nazism in Europe. Such totemic dates seem to come around more regularly and be marked in increasingly high-profile ways. Whether the 75^th anniversary of D-Day last year, marking the Battle of Britain, or numerous films about the Dunkirk debacle, the Second World War is always with us. And this without mentioning the Churchill industry

Continue Reading The Empire Strikes Back: Being Prisoners of the Past in Britain

Where is the political leadership in this time of crisis in the UK? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 22nd 2020 The news this weekend was dominated by controversy over Boris Johnson’s absentee leadership in the midst of the early stages of the coronavirus before his recent illness. Johnson missed five Cobra meetings, had a mini-holiday and delayed for 38 crucial days the UK giving the virus the importance and priority it deserved. Exemplary investigative journalism from the ‘Sunday Times’ has revealed a government asleep at the wheel, the diversionary cost of Brexit over recent years, and the cumulative effect of

Continue Reading Where is the political leadership in this time of crisis in the UK?