Will the Scottish Election Lead to a Better Nation?

By HARRY McGRATH
GLASGOW - There are 24 quotations carved into the Canongate wall of the Scottish Parliament building. One of these is "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" attributed to the great contemporary Scottish writer Alasdair Gray.

PHOTO: Adam Elder/Scottish Parliament. [Photograph (c) 2004. Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body] THE GARDEN LOBBY at the site of the new Scottish Parliament complex at Holyrood, Edinburgh.

Some years ago my friend Carl MacDougall, novelist and BBC presenter, pointed out to the authorities at the Parliament that the quotation was not original to Gray but derived from Canadian poet Dennis Lee.

Perhaps as a result of Carl's intervention, belated recognition of this in now made on the Scottish Parliament's website where the quote is listed as Gray's but is said to be "paraphrased from Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies."

Published in 1972, Lee's Civil Elegies explores the damage the poet considers was done to Canadian national identity by the country's British colonial past and American colonial present. In the passage that seems to have inspired Gray, we read "And best of all is finding a place to be/in the early days of a better civilization."

The lines that follow may also have caught Gray's eye. Lee goes on to say "For we are a conquered nation: sea to sea we bartered/everything that counts, till we have/nothing to lose but our forebears' will to lose."

The idea that Canada and Scotland have a shared experience of being colonized and conquered is a problematic one from a Scottish point of view - if only because Scotland, as a key player in British colonialism, would have to be both colonizer abroad and colonized at home.

However, it is surely no coincidence that Lee's notion that Canada in the early 1970s was in the early days of being a better place was echoed on the Canongate wall in 1999. Hopes were high that, with the opening of the Scottish Parliament, just such a phase was beginning in Scotland.

The fact that Scotland went almost 300 years without its own parliament created a paradoxical situation whereby one of the most politicized nations in the world did not have a parliament of its own to debate and decide its fate.

PHOTO: Adam Elder/Scottish Parliament. [Photograph (c) 2004. Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body] HOLYROOD, Arthur's Seat, and Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh.

So while some Scots thrived at Westminster (and still do), many more practiced their politics outside of Britain. In Canada the Scots were disproportionately involved at all levels of government.

MacDonald from Glasgow and MacKenzie from Longierait, the first two Prime Ministers; another MacDonald, the first Premier of Ontario; another MacKenzie, the first Mayor of Toronto; Murdoch from Paisley, the first Mayor of Calgary; MacLean from Tiree, the first Mayor of Vancouver - too many to list.

It could be said that there has been a kind of political symbiosis between the two countries with Scotland's political loss being Canada's political gain. But now the Scots have a parliament again, and with the Scottish National Party doing well in the opinion polls, there is a politically charged atmosphere leading up to the election on May 3. This is not to say, however, that the Canadian connection is forgotten in Scotland. The successes and failures of Quebec nationalism have been used to both promote and oppose the SNP's ambitions while the Canadian federal system generally is often used to describe what Scotland's parliament should or should not be.

The one issue that has consistently polled high on the run up to the Scottish election is that the Scots want more powers for their Parliament even if they do not support full independence.

In this area, the Canadian provincial experience is instructive. At the moment, Canadian provincial parliaments have more power than the Scottish Parliament especially their ability to exact their own provincial taxes as opposed to the Scots three percent tax varying power.

In April, Lord Steel of Aikwood, the first Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament and a long time supporter of expanded powers for the Scottish Parliament without independence, spoke at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Scottish Studies.

In his lecture he reiterated his belief that "no self respecting parliament should expect to exist permanently on a grant from another parliament" and, as well as increased taxation powers, mentioned immigration, national security and energy as areas that could be added to the remit of Scottish devolution.

In the Steel audience there were many young men and women - accountants, geologists, engineers - who were recent immigrants to Canada from Scotland and whose presence suggested that, in at least in one of these areas, increased powers for the Scottish Parliament is a matter of some urgency.

These new immigrants are mostly products of the Canadian provincial nominee program by which Canadian provinces can nominate skilled workers and have their immigration prioritised in Ottawa.

Their numbers contrast with the meagre total of seven Canadians living and working in Scotland under the "Fresh Talent Working in Scotland" scheme which is Scotland's only independent route for attracting immigrants (Scottish Parliament Written Answers Feb. 5, 2007). Scotland is again haemorrhaging talent to Canada.

This morning I found my election poll card in the mail box. I am in the Glasgow Anniesland constituency for the Scottish Parliament and Maryhill/Kelvin for the Glasgow City Council elections which take place the same day.

The voting system is relatively complicated in that the Scottish Parliament uses an additional member system (AMS) and the Council the single transferable vote system (STV), the same system recommended to British Columbia by its Citizens' Convention in 2005.

My parliamentary constituency is the same one that Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, represented until his untimely death on October 11, 2000. Dewar once remarked that "devolution is a process, not an event" and though his own Labour Party in Scotland and in Westminster oppose any increase of the Scottish Parliament's powers, there seems to be a general feeling in Scotland that increasing the powers of the Parliament is what "process" means. Hopes were so high for the new parliament in 1999 that it was probably inevitable that these hopes would be disappointed and subsequent elections blighted by apathy and low voter turnout.

This time, however, there is a brio about the Scottish election campaign that is fuelled in part by the debate concerning increased powers, what they should be and whether or not independence is the most appropriate way of acquiring them. After the false dawn of 1999, perhaps these really are the early days of a better nation.

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