Scottish Independence

Beyond the Cultural Cringe: The Need for a Multi-Story Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 3rd 2014 The independence referendum is remaking Scotland. History is being made which scholars will look back and study years from now. The very idea of Scotland is on the move and changing, as is what we think of as politics and even the notion of what is public. One of the constant refrains, both in the independence debate, and over the last 30 years, has been the importance, role and, critically, the fragility of Scottish culture. Whether it has been the existence (or not)

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Scotland: On the Eve of a Historic Choice Gerry Hassan, Caledonian Dreaming: The Quest for a Different Scotland, Luath Press £11.99 Reviewed by Joe Lafferty On the eve of a historic referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014, Gerry Hassan’s Caledonian Dreaming is a landmark book. He articulates, with incisive political and historical analysis, the landscape of what has taken the UK and Scotland to where they are today. And at the same time, this is a profoundly human book. Hassan is no stranger to serious and heavyweight political analysis with a number of books under his belt from The

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A Journey into the World of George Galloway Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 27th 2014 Many ridiculous things have been said in the independence referendum. There was Alex Salmond’s questioning of Alistair Darling in the first debate on the possibilities of ‘aliens’; Jenny Hjul in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ on ‘the enemy’ next door and then trying to pass it off as humour; and only last week Polly Toynbee in ‘The Guardian’ referenced Alex Salmond and Robert Bruce, then wrote, ‘That’s what fighters the world over say’, listing a host of warzones from Gaza to Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, and then

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Tom Devine, the Indy Ref and the Myths of Modern Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 20th 2014 The independence referendum to some is their lifeblood; to others it is a distraction; but what it inarguably has done is to reveal much about what Scotland is, thinks and feels. Something interesting happened this week when respected historian Tom Devine came out for independence. His reasoning was, he said in an interview in ‘The Observer’ that, ‘It is the Scots who have succeeded most in preserving the British idea of fairness and compassion in terms of state support and intervention’. The

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The Power and Absence of Doubt in the Nationalist Independence Cause Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 13th 2014 It has not been a great week for the independence cause and for the SNP. This has been made worse by the self-denial and delusion expressed by a host of independence supporters including parts of the commentariat, the SNP and on-line opinion. The SNP’s position on currency union, along with EU membership, has for ages been the weak flank of their entire proposition. Thus, it should have been no surprise to anyone when Alistair Darling basically mugged Salmond on the former in

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What does it take to be a good man in Scotland? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 6th 2014 This is the day after the first gladiatorial debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling - two respectable, rather conventional, men of similar age only divided by the constitutional question. A large part of the independence debate like significant elements of Scottish public life is defined and shaped by gender and in particular, the behaviour, actions and views of some men. For decades Scottish politics, at Westminster level, was a male-only zone; as recently as 1979 only one woman Scottish MP was

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The Strange Death of Liberal England Continued Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 30th 2014 Liberal England is in a state of confusion. There is the challenge of the Scottish independence referendum, the continued right wing drift of UK politics, and the slow detachment of the UK from the European Union. All of the above cause apoplexy and dismay to the thinking elements of the English left. One response to this from people such as Labour MP John Cruddas and Billy Bragg is to try to re-ignite the English radical imagination and challenge the increasingly English nationalist overtones of Nigel

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A Time for Boldness and Honesty: 21^st Century Scottish Radicalism Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 23rd 2014 The independence referendum has seen an explosion of radical and progressive thinking and activism. Where there was once silence and disillusion, now there is hope, excitement and imagination. There is the generosity and pluralism of National Collective, the breadth and reach of the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), and the energy and dynamism of the Jimmy Reid Foundation. Then there is a wider set of trends looking at how to develop a deeper democracy from the work of So Say Scotland and its Citizen’s

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The Myth of 'Divided Scotland' Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 16th 2014 One of the most oft-repeated descriptions of Scotland at the moment in the heat of the independence referendum is the problem of ‘divided Scotland’. A Yes victory will leave a ‘deeply divided Scotland’ claimed Better Together chief Blair McDougall (Better Together, June 8^th 2014), while a pro-independence website declared in response, ‘A deeply divided Scotland will be the result of a No vote’ (Arc of Prosperity, June 9^th 2014). Much cited recent polling shows that 38% of Scots believe divisions will remain whatever the referendum outcome, while 36%

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A Letter to Scotland’s New Radicals Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, July 9th 2014 Radical Scotland’s re-emergence and re-invigoration around the independence referendum has been one of the most welcome and positive occurrences for many years in Scottish politics. This is a real challenge and change from the predictable stale menu which has been passed off as our political debate and choices for decades. This is even more true of what has presented itself as radical and left politics. An array of groups, networks and initiatives of which the most prominent are National Collective, the Radical Independence Campaign and Jimmy

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