[illegible] No [illegible] of Whitsun. The only [illegible] school is Macbeth. And 25 percent of the electorate favour immediate independence from England,
For the Left, ignorance of Scotland is compounded by a myth straight from the witches' cauldron in Macbeth — 'Scotland is more militant than England'. Yesterday: the Red Clyde, John Maclean and the Glasgow general strike of 1919, Today: the huge Labour vote and the Lee Jeans occupation The myth is balanced by an apocalyptic view of a wholly right-wing Scottish National Party (SNP), behind which lurks a new Scots bourgeoisie grown fat on North Sea oil profits
But in 1981 neither a vague feeling that Scotland has quaint cultural differences nor a mystical faith in Scots militancy are sufficient to understand the political processes at work north of the border. The heroic symbol of the Lee Jeans occupation cannot hide the historic defeat for the west of Scotland shop stewards movement in the pathetic collapse of Talbot Linwood [illegible] strengthened by the arrival of Jim Sillars, challenging for the leadership with calls for civil disobedience and Welsh-style strikes.
To understand these [illegible] let me offer a quick consumer guide on what-to-read in those odd moments between work/meetings/sleep. (Insomniacs will have a [illegible])
Nationalism and devolution
Socialists and the New Rise of Scottish Nationalism by Neil Williamson (Basis of Ideas supplement to Red Weekly, February 1977), Best, if all too brief, analysis from a revolutionary marxist viewpoint. Scottish nationalism is seen not as a plot by oil-rich bankers, nor the result of economic deprivation, but as the response of a new Scots middle class to the political crisis of post-imperial Britain. The failure of Wilson and Callaghan drew in the skilled workers behind them. Arguing that socialists should support the campaign for an Assembly, Williamson wrote 'In Scotland today it is necessary to link up with this profound desire for change, no matter how confused and ambiguous its expression... As long as the mass of the population remain committed to bourgeois democracy, it is inevitable that their demands for change will be articulated through the [illegible] and promote the masses to relate to the Assembly, using their own self [illegible] their own collective weight, their own political organisations, and through this to encourage the maximum distrust in practice of constitutionalism and electoralism'
The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution by Henry Drucker and Gordon Brown (Longman, 1980, £3.95) Curious damp squib from two Scottish Labourites who have figured prominently in the fight to get the party to honour its devolution commitment, Their reasons for the failure of devolution: fear of the expense and the bureaucracy. This is possibly true for Edinburgh lawyers but hardly for the working class voters: the majority of those voting supported Home Rule. The failure of the referendum lay rather (1) in the rule that 40 per cent of those eligible to vote must vote yes, which the Labour Left imposed as a wrecking device. And (2) in the general working class feeling that devolution divorced from socialist policies was not immediately relevant to fighting off the impending arrival of mass unemployment. However, after two years of Thatcher, opinion polls show a massive 55 per cent [illegible] of the electorate in favour of an Assembly with full powers to deal with unemployment Drucker and Brown imply that any future devolution is dependent on a complete overhaul of the British constitution, Certainly the roots of support for Home Rule lie in the crisis of the Tory-dominated ruling bloc. But devolution will not be brought about by the legalistic drafters of ever more sophisticated constitutions. The genie of proportional representation and growing popular disenchantment with Thatcher will throw the initiative into the hands of the Scottish masses. Which is why revolutionaries must continue to support the call for a Scottish Assembly free to determine its own powers.
The Break-Up of Britain by Tom Nairn (NLB, 1977, £7.50) Described by Neil Williamson as 'brilliant impressionism', this remains the only major marxist attempt to explain the rise of Scottish nationalism as part of an international process, The uneven development of world capitalism forces national bourgeoisies to modernise their economies, but this can only be done by mobilising 'their' working classes and intellectuals around a nationalist ideology. But where does socialism fit in, Tom?
Internal Colonialism by Michael Hechter (Routledge, 1975, £3.95). Massively influential on the Scottish nationalist Left, Hechter claims that Ireland, Wales and Scotland were internally colonised by imperialist England. True for Ireland and [illegible] the union of 1707 to get a slice of the English imperialist cake. Scotland is no more an oppressed nation than Canada or Australia.
The Scottish labour movement
No Mean Fighter by Harry McShane (Pluto, 1978, £3.95) Anecdotal biography of a militant ninety years young and still an active, revolutionary. The book provides a fascinating account of the Red Clyde during the First World War, unemployment struggles of the thirties and Harry's break with the CP in the fifties but itself exhibits the syndicalist weakness of Clydeside militancy: the Labour Party hardly gets a mention
Revolt on the Clyde by Willie Gallacher (Lawrence & Wishart, 1978, £2.75) As readable as Harold Robbins, and as fictional, this is a reprint of Gallacher's 1936 memoir of his leadership of the Clyde shop stewards during and after the Great War. A classic Stalinist rewrite of history, Gallacher poses as a comrade of John Maclean, while in reality he expelled the Maclean group from the Clyde Workers' Committee when they denounced his refusal to oppose the war in practice. The book contains the famous ultra-left assessment of the 1919 Glasgow general strike: 'We could easily have persuaded the soldiers to come out and Glasgow would have been ours.' But only a few months earlier the German shop stewards launched a real uprising in similar circumstances which ended in massacre and the murder of Rosa Luxemburg. The isolation of the syndicalist-led Clyde stewards from the mass of workers who had just voted for Lloyd George demanded united-front politics — not an insurrection in one city which would have been drowned in blood.
John Maclean by Nan Milton (Pluto, 1973, £3.50); In the Rapids of Revolution by John Maclean (Allison & Busby, 1978, £3.50) Maclean's daughter Nan provides a first class political biography of the real revolutionary from Scotland, where a mixture of Calvinist theoretical culture and the immigration of the oppressed Irish and Highlanders created fertile ground for marxism to penetrate the leadership of the labour movement Read in conjunction with Maclean's fragmentary writings, it reveals his acute perception of the syndicalist weakness of the early CP. In the context of the Irish War of Independence, Maclean's espousal of Scottish republicanism can be seen as a brilliant, if limited, attempt to open up a popular revolutionary alternative His failure lay not at all in his nationalism but in his inability to relate to the emergence of the Labour Party as a mass force and his explicit rejection of the united front tactic.
General histories
The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class by JD Young (Croom Helm, 1979, £9.95). [illegible] monumental Making of the English Working Class, by ardent left-wing nationalist. Spoiled by its devotion both to Thompson's populism and to the idea that Scotland is an internal colony
A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 by TC Smout (Fontana, 1975, £1.95) A professional anti-Marxist liberal, Smout is the leading historian in Scotland. This commercially successful and highly readable history-from-below is Scotland without the Kings and Queens,
A History of Scotland by JD Mackie (Pelican, 2nd edition 1978, £1.50). Standard political history, but mawkish towards the end: 'Scotland is proud that she gave to the steadfast King George VI the brave Queen who stood by him in the evil day.' Actually, Scotland resolutely ignored the Jubilee.
Scottish Capitalism edited by Tony Dickson (Lawrence & Wishart, 1980, £9.50). The CP's version of Scottish history in a series of potted essays, with a paperback edition on the way, The book should have rescued us from the errors of the above-mentioned bourgeois historians; instead it falls into the [illegible] Marxist trap of assuming Scotland to be an essentially unchanged national entity stretching down from Roman times. The chapter by John Foster, leader of the Stalinist wing of the Glasgow CP, tells us that Scottish national consciousness was founded in tenth century resistance to Vikings. As a result, the book has trouble explaining why nationalism has emerged with a bang in Late Capitalism, except in fatuous terms of twentieth century resistance to London bureaucrats Perniciously, the invention of a timeless, classless Scottish nationality provides some of the ideological sustenance for the Scottish CP's perennial hunt for someone with whom to make an anti-monopoly alliance. (Witness last year's Scottish TUC-sponsored Assembly on Unemployment, to which the STUC's leadership invited the Scottish Tory Party). The final chapter of Scottish Capitalism, an uncritical hymn of praise to the CP's long time (but eroding) control of the Scots trade union machinery, contains the priceless gem that there has never been any rank and file opposition to the policies of the STUC, Possibly not from the Tories,
Economic background
An Anatomy of Scottish Capitalism by J Scott and M Hughes (Croom Helm, 1980, £10.95) Powerful empirical study which definitively proves there is a distinct Scottish bourgeoisie Scotland is one of the most capital-rich countries in the world but it's all invested abroad
Scotland 1980 edited by D Mackay (Q Press, 1977, £2.40), Ideologues of the new Scottish bourgeoisie tell us how independent capitalist Scotland will fare provided it curbs the unions and stays in NATO.
Who Owns Scotland by John McEwen (Polygon, 1981). Justly famous exposé of how much of Scotland is in the hands of the multinationals and the aristocracy: for example Willie Whitelaw 'owns' Stirlingshire. The overcrowded towns leave most of what is the northern third of Britain free for grouse shooting One day the grouse will have their revenge
Women's oppression
Scottish Women's Place By E Hunter. (EUSPB, 1978). Useful guide to the distinct legal and economic situation of women in Scotland, [illegible] where petty bourgeois Calvinism and the 'hard man' ethic of lumpen proletarian Glasgow combine to produce a particularly unpleasant MacHismo. For regular coverage of the women's movement in Scotland see the excellent local feminist journal Msprint.
Journals
Finally, as a means of keeping up with current [illegible] The Bulletin of Scottish Politics (£1.25) [illegible] Tom Nairn which provides a platform for socialist supporters of self-determination, including the IMG and an international forum for Marxist theories of nationalism through good English translations of European writings. The first issue even contains a riposte from Nairn to a Neil Williamson article in International. Alternately praised and damned as a Scottish New Left Review, the Bulletin is the only serious left publication in Scotland... Which says a lot about how far the left has still to travel in understanding Alba Sosialach
Fiction
If mentally exhausted by all of the above, try the good modern Scots novels. Not necessarily left-wing but have a feeling for the place and times: A Green Tree in Gedde and The Wind Shifts by Alan Sharp, Docherty by William McIlvanney; Its Colours They are Fine, a brilliant recreation of Scots Orange Loyalist mentality by Allan Spence; From Scenes Like These by Gordon Williams; The Dear Green Place by Archie Hind
Books mentioned in this guide can be obtained from First of May Bookshop, 43 Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh. (phone: 031-429 [illegible]) Except where books are only published in hardback, the price quoted is for the paperback edition Subscription information for Msprint Clare Gorven, 12 Haimyre St, Edinburgh; for The Bulletin of Scottish Politics: 58 Queens St, Edinburgh Further reading guides of this kind are planned for future issues of International. Suggestions for further topics will be welcomed; so will offers to contribute guides, reviews or review articles. Please write to: Reviews Editor, International, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP.