Scottish Review

A Memo to James Naughtie on his Return to Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 10th 2013 Dear Jim, It has come to my attention that you planning to move north to cover the independence referendum, admittedly for only two days a week. Since you last worked in Scotland in 1977 a lot has altered that you might find at first a bit bewildering. Scotland has changed, not entirely in ways immediately apparent or straightforward. Some institutions which have the same names as 36 years ago have changed, nearly totally out of recognition. New bodies and different ways of things

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Scotland’s comforting stories and the missing voices of public life Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, September 24th 2013 Scotland in its politics, culture and sense of its identity likes to tell itself a comforting story. There was once a Labour Scotland optimistic story of lifting working people up, and now there is a Nationalist account about the possibilities of independence. There is even a positive pro-union version that has not been fully articulated in public for many years. All of these are partial accounts, and one of the many challenges they face is the continued existence of negative stories which emphasise

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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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Scotland’s Big Debate, Mini-Crises and A  Tale of Two Establishments Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 27th 2013 We hear all the time from all quarters and opinions that the independence debate is a historic one and a momentous decision. Sadly often it doesn’t feel like that at the moment, seeming more like the next installment in the Labour-SNP dirty war or a bitter by-election in a closely fought parliamentary seat. The key issues, if you go by what has been in the media in the last few weeks, has been who paid for a newspaper article, whether Labour for Independence

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The missing stories and, for some, the pain of growing up Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 8th 2013 On Saturday the Scottish football season opened in earnest with the first weekend programme of the new Scottish Premiership. There has been little excitement amongst fans, followers and media, despite the final reincorporation of the league authorities into one body, the Scottish Professional Football League, and the ending of football as a closed shop with the agreement of play-offs in and out of the lower league. But it all seems to most the status quo by another name, aided by the continuation

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The Fall of BBC’s  ‘Sportscene’ and Why It Matters Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 18th 2013 Scottish football matters to lots of us. Its images and halcyon images define many of our lives - the Lisbon Lions in 67, Rangers in Barcelona in 72, Aberdeen in Gothenburg in 83, the Jim Baxter keepie-up and the Archie Gemmell run. When you think of English football one of the many images that might spring to mind is ‘Match of the Day’ and this may include its current opening credits. You would not say the same of the current BBC Scotland version of

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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 Scots and Power: The Cardinal, John Haldane and Glasgow Rangers FC Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 5th 2013 Scotland has a strange relationship with those in power and authority. We tend to buy into the romantic stories that we are a radical, restless nation, who fear no one and question and challenge everything. The truth is very different. To some there is a suspicion of those in power; but across society, the political spectrum, and mainstream media, there has consistently been in Scotland a lack of curiosity about who has power, and a near-complete absence of a

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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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Searching for the ‘New Tartan Tories’ of Scottish Public Life Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 11th 2012 Scottish politics has certainly burst into life in the last two weeks if the scale of overblown rhetoric and insult is any gauge. The catalyst has been Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont’s speech challenging the consequences and cost-effectiveness of certain universal benefits in hardened financial times. The interventions from politicians and the ensuing public discussion tell us some revealing truths about our ability to have honest conversations. Firstly, lets look at some of the language used in this debate. Lamont talked about

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