Scottish society

The continuing relevance of solidarity and class Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 16th 2013 Scotland has been informed by the experiences and memories of working class life and culture since the time of the industrial revolution. A majority of Scots see themselves as working class and more people do now than over a generation ago in 1979. In a strange turn of affairs, being working class post-crash is all the rage nowadays. It might not be the sixties when being working class was associated with the age of meritocracy and tearing down the old elites, but change is in

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Time to Be Bold in Making a New Scottish Democracy! Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 19th 2013 We hear all the time that a ‘historic decision’ awaits Scots next year but so far this has seemed like a typical Scots campaign as nervous forces of change face a techy displaced establishment and a media unsure of its role. All this in the context of traditional institutions declining, new ways of organising and social media emerging, and a country dramatically changed in the last three decades, which ‘official Scotland’ finds difficult to fully grasp. Our traditional politics struggle with this. The

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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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Yes to a Different Scotland Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 18th 2013 One year to the Scottish independence referendum. A historic milestone. A host of mainstream media programmes, discussions and items yesterday and today are marking it. One of the most important was ‘Newsnight’s’ Berwick upon Tweed programme on Tuesday broadcast to a British wide audience which looked as though it was filmed in the ‘Great British Bake Off’ tent! The programme was revealing and fascinating, from Kirsty Wark’s conspicuous slips showing her bias, to Margaret Curran, Shadow Secretary of State’s constant reciting of the word ‘separation’ in her opening

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Fighting Poverty is about more than the Bedroom Tax Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 14th 2013 This week’s Scottish Government Budget for 2014-15 and 2015-16 saw battlelines drawn on who and how best to mitigate the worst effects of the bedroom tax. Now in a week when the UN special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik weighed in against the measure, it has to be recognised that this is not the main challenge facing welfare in Scotland. In terms of the UK government’s recent welfare policies, the new guidelines in relation to the Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) with their harsh regime of sanctions and

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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 is Different and not that Different: But what does it mean? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 7th 2013 Scotland is different. Everybody who lives or works here or knows anything about Scotland recognises this. Scotland has had a distinctive history, traditions, institutions and set of experiences. Unlike Wales, it never fully disappeared, even at the height of unionist Britain, and remained a legal and administrative entity and not part of ‘Greater England’. All of this meant that the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 was relatively simple and straightforward, building on the legacy of over a century of

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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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Britain – no longer the land of the future, but one living in the past Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 27th 2013 Once upon a time many years ago, like many other Scots, I believed in Britain. Britain seemed the future: it had appeal, appeared modern, progressive and full of promise. That now seems a world away from the Britain of today: one which looks to have given up on the future and instead appears content to live permanently in a fictitious past. This is the fantasyland Britain we see before us this week - of a society, culture and

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