Scotland United: The Need to Find Common Ground against the Free Market Vandals
Scotland United: The Need to Find Common Ground against the Free Market Vandals Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 30th 2012 One of the fundamentals that we often forget in our ongoing Scottish constitutional debate is how Britain and in particular England understands or more accurately doesn’t understand us anymore. This was brought home to me in this week’s ‘Spectator’ debate, ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’, held in London. Three people, Margo Macdonald, Kelvin MacKenzie and myself were asked to speak for the proposition, and three against, Malcolm Rifkind and Rory Stewart, both Tory MPs, and Iain Martin, with
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What has happened to Scottish Labour and how can it shape its future?
What has happened to Scottish Labour and how can it shape its future? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 23rd 2012 Scottish politics were once seemingly filled with certainty - we were Labour, socialist, collectivist, and didn’t like those nasty Tories. Reality was actually always different but there was a Labour vision of Scotland which many of us grew up with, knew its positive aspects, and which made us feel ennobled and liberated. That vision lifted hundreds of thousands of Scots out of poverty, widened opportunities and brightened countless lives via education, health, housing and numerous other public services. This
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The Perils of Content Free Campaign Scotland
The Perils of Content Free Campaign Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 16th 2012 The times they are a changing all over the world from Greece and Spain to the USA and China. There is unrest, voices of protest rising and authorities reacting with confusion as they cling to the wreckage of failed economic orthodoxy. At the same time the battle of Scotland unfolds; one which isn’t life or death or black and white thankfully. But to some it seems that way. The official independence campaign saw John Swinney this week declare his support for a ‘highly integrated UK financial
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Britain and the Problem of Living in the Past
Britain and the Problem of Living in the Past Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 9th 2012 As Jubilee celebrations die down in the short period of calm before the Olympics, questions arise about what all this means, what Britain and Britishness is, and what the future might be for both. The familiar account states that Britain does pageantry well, putting on a show, the big occasion, seamlessly combining old and new, tradition and modernisation. But is this an adequate explanation? The British like anyone enjoy a party and having a good time but what we seem to have been
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The Scotland of Sixty Years Ago and What It Says About Us Today
The Scotland of Sixty Years Ago and What It Says About Us Today Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 2nd 2012 The impending Diamond Jubilee unsurprisingly evokes questions about the current mood of Scotland and Britain. There are constant references to the past world of 1952, the Scotland and Britain of 60 years ago, but facts and figures do not fully convey what it was like to live back then. Perhaps going back to the archives of ‘The Scotsman’ for the month of May 1952 might help. On first impressions, so much has changed. The paper of 60 years is
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The New Flat Earthers: Barbarism Begins at Home
The New Flat Earthers: Barbarism Begins at Home Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 26th 2012 Once upon a time the world was filled with earnest left-wing revolutionaries confident that they were the future. They inhabited places like the Sorbonne, Berkeley and LSE campuses and thought they spoke for all humanity leading to a whole generation being caricatured as ‘Private Eye’ character ‘Dave Spart’, ‘television sit-com Citizen Smith’ and the propensity for endless ideological schisms seen in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. All these stereotypes are now many decades old but they still carry some currency because they hit a
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How to make and understand the Case for the Union
How to make and understand the Case for the Union Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 19th 2012 This week has seen important developments in the pro-union campaign. First, we are not meant to call it that; the organisers have indicated that the word ‘union’ won’t play any part in the title of the campaign. Second, they have revealed that they will have lots of money, resources, and celebrities. There have also been reflective pieces by Colin Kidd and Bill Jamieson in this paper which have added to public deliberations, the former in particular making a nuanced historical argument for
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The Limits of Modernisation: Blair, Cameron and Salmond
The Limits of Modernisation: Blair, Cameron and Salmond Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 12th 2012 ‘Modernisation’ is one of the defining words of our time, along with ‘legacy’ and ‘journey’. It is a word used by Tony Blair, David Cameron and Alex Salmond. It is an in-word for those who feel they shape and define the age, change and the world. It has had an interesting trajectory; it was once bright, shiny, confident, swaggering with confidence, impatient with opposition, and believing the future was theirs for shaping. It became associated with Tony Blair and New Labour; modernisation was about
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The Problem of Living with Capital-ism
The Problems of Living with Capital-ism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 5th 2012 London is ‘the world city’ of these isles, a place which attracts and pulls talents from across the UK and the world: on a par with New York, Paris and Tokyo. Yet the London love-in of our political classes, media and business elites is fast pushing things to breaking point. We have had to endure Boris v. Ken as if it were a national contest, and this week the militarisation of the London Olympics and Heathrow chaos have dominated the airwaves. As UK politics and society
The Beginnings of an Alternative Scotland
The Beginnings of an Alternative Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 28th 2012 What a week it has been - Murdoch, Trump, Rangers FC and of course the economy going into double dip recession. It is all-reminiscent of that last period of acute crisis, a failing, nervous political class and economic instability: the 1970s amplified by Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent current TV series on the decade. Scottish debate on the economy has for many years been shaped by two contradictory strands. The first has been the power of conventional economics, concerns over our relative economic growth rate compared to the
