Scottish civil society

The rise and fall of civil society in Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 12th 2020 Last year in the US in the town of Williamstown, Massachusetts I got into a conversation with a complete stranger who followed politics avidly. I naturally asked him about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, to which he responded that even more important than defeating Trump was the vibrancy and health of civil society. It struck me as a perceptive remark in seeing past the debris of the Trump Presidency and looking at something deeper, more long-term and centred on the health of

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A Time for Big Ideas for Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday National, February 16th 2020 Big ideas are important. Boris Johnson is talking about infrastructure projects, committing to HS2 and spending £106 billion of taxpayers’ monies. He also this week announced a review into the feasibility of a 20-mile long Scotland-Northern Ireland bridge that will cost £20 billion. Irrespective of the merits of these projects, and the obvious point that the Scottish-Northern Irish bridge has next to no chance of ever being built, they mark a different kind of politics at least rhetorically from that of Boris Johnson’s immediate Tory predecessors.

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A World of Borders, Space and Culture: A Tribute to Roanne Dods Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, May 31st 2017 Much of modern life is shaped by the chasm between the official narratives of institutions, authority and experts and how most of us experience everyday life. This is obvious in the bizarre experience of Britain and Scotland’s current election - one which is consuming the attentions of the political classes and its hangers-on, but which is bemusing and infuriating most of the rest of us. Don’t switch-off now. This isn’t another piece about the election and how awful it is. Instead,

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Gerry Hassan, Independence of the Scottish Mind: Elite Narratives, Public Spaces and the Making of a Modern Nation, Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-137-41413-7 Reviewed by Scott Hames Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Summer 2016 The feverish upheaval of Scottish politics has gradually become its own kind of normal. On 5 May the voters practically yawned as they seized their second chance in twelve months to slaughter the Scottish Labour party. (The body-count is considerable, but it was an apathetic smothering compared to the gore of 2015.) As the SNP’s post-referendum insurgency beds down into cautious hegemony, boredom and

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Scotland’s Constitution and the Strange Non-Death of ‘Civic Scotland’ Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 2nd 2014 Scotland is to have its own constitution. Two years exactly to the day that Scotland could become an independent nation, Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made the announcement that many had long anticipated and suspected. This was a significant moment with huge import, whatever the result of the independence referendum. It can be seen as confirmation of Scotland’s slow reassertion of itself as a distinct political community, but was also filled with all the usual tropes and references: ‘enshrining Scottish values’, the ‘sovereignty of

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The Art of Living Together and the Art of Dying Gerry Hassan National Collective, January 22nd 2014 Sometimes it takes outside voices to reinforce what you already know. So it was with Fintan O’Toole and the second in the series of Glasgow School of Art-University of the West of Scotland ‘Cultures of Independence’ seminars. O’Toole is author of the acclaimed books, ‘Ship of Fools’ and ‘Enough is Enough’ (1), both wonderful and powerful counter blasts to the baloney and bubble of the Celtic Tiger and its excesses. He is of no doubt that Scotland is at a hugely important

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The Emergence of ‘the Third Scotland’ Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 12th 2013 Two Scottish establishments facing one another - one the old Labour Scotland which has administered and dominated public life for the last 50 years; the other the newcomer on the block: the bright, shiny SNP establishment full of vigour and promise. This is what lies behind the slugfest of the ‘Yes/No’ debate, its partisan adherents, and the simple, superficial presentation of this in large sections of the mainstream media. Two weeks ago a piece I wrote for ‘Scottish Review’ outlined the nature of this non-debate

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Games with Shadows: Living in Thatcher’s Scotland Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, April 10th 2013 We live in Thatcher’s Britain, yet that statement is obvious, contentious and deeply divisive. And this is all the more true of Thatcher north of the border. Thatcher is simultaneously both history and present day. You can hear this in the differing accounts on TV and radio; with conservative figures claiming she remade the modern world from knocking down the Berlin Wall and freeing Eastern Europe, to preventing a future ‘socialist Britain’; while elements of the left wail in pain and agony at how events have

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What do we do when we talk (and don’t talk) about Power? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 9th 2013 The story of modern Scotland is an obvious one: we are a nation and a community, increasingly defined by these two terms and from this comes our sense of difference and identity. Beyond that it begins to get complicated and contested; our prevailing account of ourselves is that we are centre-left, egalitarian, inclusive and radical, and the missing word in front of each of these is more; meaning more than England, which for many is the crucial ingredient. All of

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The Scottish Press, Generation Gridlock and Living with Crony Capitalism Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 21st 2013 The Scottish media and press are not exactly in a healthy state; facing pressures and constrictions from every angle, from the expectations and demands of an independence referendum, to disappearing audiences and revenues. This is the backdrop to Leveson, the Scottish ‘expert’ response (the McCluskey report), and the debate so far. Twenty years ago, the atmosphere was completely different, filled with the air of self-congratulation and smugness of everything being labeled ‘Scottish’ and the press defined by ‘Real Scots Read the

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