Scotland: Still a Land
Filled with Contradictions
By HARRY McGRATH
Even the Scottish weather has changed since I left. I moved back to Glasgow last summer and watched in amazement as some people (admittedly hardy types) wore shorts deep into October.
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| GEORGE REID, Presiding Officer (speaker) of the Scottish Parliament examining the first minutes of the Sons of Scotland Royal Scot Camp formed in Vancouver in 1892. Also pictured are (left to right): Lee Bridges, Personal Assistant to the Presiding Officer; Leith Davis, SFU English Department; Harry McGrath, Coordinator SFU Centre for Scottish Studies; Martin Cronin, British Consul-General to British Columbia; Dick Mungin, CEO Scotland Funds, Frances Fournier, SFU Archivist. |
From then, I have been waiting for the sideways sleet that I thought I remembered but it hasn't materialized. Instead blossoms and snowdrops appeared in the Botanic Gardens before the end of January, the pleasure of seeing them somewhat dampened by news reports that their early arrival foreshadows the apocalypse.
The warming of the Scottish climate is not the only obvious change here. I left a country of council houses and returned to one where home ownership is standard and house prices soaring; smoky pubs have been cleaned and fumigated; a myriad of coffee houses have replaced British rail coffee which had the taste and texture of crude oil. Even British Rail is no longer with us.
There has been a renaissance in Arts and Culture in Scotland with a host of new writers, artists and musicians and refurbished galleries and museums. In Glasgow especially, buildings which were once used for vastly different purposes - a tram terminus, an old fruitmarket, any number of former residential tenements - have, with great imagination, been turned into venues for the Arts.
Something seems to have happened to the Scottish economy too. On Buchanan Street in Glasgow and Princess Street in Edinburgh hordes of shoppers trawl up and down and give the impression of plenty. In certain areas - health and education in particular - salaries, which were a fraction of those available in Canada when I left, are now comparable and may even be slightly in Scotland's favour.
Of course, nothing is ever simple here and Scotland remains, as it has always been, a land of contradictions. The Scottish Executives self styled "Best Small Country in the World" is also, according to the United Nations, the most violent country in the western world.
Again, the Executives nod to multiculturalism "One Scotland, Many Cultures" sits uneasily with a recent report that one in four young Scots has been racially abused. Areas of Scottish cities with half million pound houses abut so called "sink schemes" where chronic unemployment is passed from one generation to the next.
Alcoholism remains a problem and may even be getting worse as it now seems to afflict Scottish women almost as much as does Scottish men.
The question of who best to build on Scotland's progress while addressing its problems is at the core of the Scottish Parliamentary election campaign here which started some time ago even though the election isn't until May 3. Favourable advance polls for the Scottish National Party against the incumbent Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition has added spice to the campaigns and may even wake up a Scottish electorate which largely slept through the last Scottish election.
In keeping with one of the awful traditions of Scottish history, the election has already become something of a civil war with the charge being led, not by the governing executive in Scotland, but by Scottish leaders of the Westminster government - Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Reid and Douglas Alexander - who are lining up to tell their fellow Scots that independence will leave Scotland small and isolated, overrun by terrorists, subject to a crushing budget deficit, and even separate Scots from their relations in England.
Meanwhile the nationalists take umbrage at what they feel the central message is - that hapless Scots are incapable of running their own affairs. They also increasingly point to areas that seem to concern the Scottish people, like the upgrading of the Trident nuclear system on the Clyde and the use of Prestwick Airport as a refuelling stop for American planes carrying bombs bound for Lebanon, but which the Scottish Parliament is constitutionally prevented from addressing.
The debating chamber in the Scottish Parliament was designed in a semi_circle, a conscious echo of the United Nations pattern and a deliberate attempt to create a different atmosphere from the antagonistic face_offs of the Westminster tradition.
As the argument between independent government and devolved parliament continues, however, old ways are reasserting themselves and things are getting heated and partisan. Expect more hostility in the next three months - watch this space.
Harry McGrath emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1981. He is now living back in Glasgow from where he files this column.
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