The Light's on at Signpost (15 page)

Don’t be naive. Political correctness demands that blame should lie on one side only, usually the British and American, and that no non-whites can ever be taxed with past crimes, the rationale being that if they committed them, they were justified, and it was all the whites’ fault anyway. Incidentally, I doubt if many “Native Americans” have even heard of Fort William Henry, and you can be sure that no p.c. historian is going to enlighten them.

So much for the apology industry, one of the most truly rotten manifestations of p.c. And yet great and good people are stupid enough, and pressured enough, to subscribe to it; they feel they ought to, and not having considered the dreadful implications of the concept of racial guilt, they accept meekly the vilification from ethnic minority agitators and liberal bigots. The black humour of it all is that they believe they are living in the most enlightened age this country has ever seen, when the truth is that we have to look back to the days of supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church and the excesses of the Puritans to find spiritual tyrannies to compare with political correctness. Common to all is the abominable doctrine: “Thou shalt not speak, nor even think for thyself, but only as thou art told.”

(Oh, shame on me. I have used the phrase “black humour”, and must apologise for the deep offence this must have given to all non-whites. It was entirely unintentional—which of course is no excuse. Sick humour, then. I’ll just have to risk offending everyone in hospital.)

“T
HERE’S LITTLE GOOD
in an English Whig; in a Scotch Whig there’s none,” says John Law of Laurieston in Sabatini’s
The Gamester
. For Whig read politician, and consider, in support of this, that the most Scottish government ever to sit at Westminster is manifestly the worst. Whether the new Scottish Parliament will prove to be a burdensome and expensive disaster it is still too early to say, but the eagerness with which its members have voted for a colossally expensive and entirely unnecessary new parliament building which will be an architectural atrocity as well as a monument to its occupiers’ self-importance, does not bode well.

I was, and remain, a firm anti-Scottish Nationalist, but whereas my enmity thirty-five years ago was unqualified, and expressed through the columns of
The Glasgow Herald
at every opportunity, it has been modified of late. I can no longer blame any inhabitant of Scotland for wanting to get rid of Westminster rule, although whether King Stork will be any better than King Log (assuming full independence does come) is doubtful. He’ll be a dam’ sight more expensive, with the loss of the Westminster subsidy and inevitable increased taxation—and this, I confess, was what I found most baffling about the vote (minority one though it was) to set up the Edinburgh Parliament in the first place. If my countrymen had a virtue, I always thought, it was thrift, and yet they voted for something which would inevitably lighten their pockets—and to no good purpose that I can see.

Of course, the cry will be that self-government, whether by the present half-parliament or a fully independent one, is to be preferred to government from London, and there’s something in it, if not much. Certain matters can probably be better settled by Scots in Scotland than by Westminster. But the real reason for Scottish satisfaction in devolution is that it feeds the national
amour propre
, and may be seen as raising two fingers to England—or, as the more virulent Sassenach-baiters like to say, “the English”.

Well, it will certainly be an expensive gesture, and to me it seems to be a symptom not of Scottish pride, but rather of a lack of it. There is something wrong, I feel, with a country whose nationalism seems to be based, to some extent if not entirely, on dislike of another country. I never hear that God-awful dirge, “Flower of Scotland”, which must be the most pathetic whine ever set to music, without reflecting on the inferiority complex which it reflects. You don’t, if you have any national pride, have as your anthem a prolonged greet against an enemy whom you last defeated on a large scale seven centuries ago. “Sent them homeward to think again,” indeed; well, they did think again, and beat the hell out of us on more than one subsequent occasion, and we only held on by dint of a ferocious refusal to be subdued which I’m not sure still exists in Scotland today. If Scotland proves to be pro-European, I can be sure it doesn’t.

The damnable thing about this poor-mouthed resentment of England, which so often finds an unworthy echo in the shawl-over-the-head complaint that Scotland has been oppressed and held down, is that it’s so much rubbish. Until recently, no self-respecting Scot felt anything but superiority towards his southern neighbour. After all, Flodden and Falkirk and Solway Moss notwithstanding, we had stood toe to toe with the most formidable foe on earth and seen them off as no other nation ever had (and if this seems at odds with my sneer at “Flower of Scotland”, it isn’t, because it’s said with pride and not with whimpering self-pity). We weren’t
just good, we were the best, the little, poverty-stricken corner of Europe that gave the world a lion’s share of great inventions and discoveries, rivalled only by Greece among the small nations of genius, whose scholars and adventurers and fighting men and explorers and scientists were household words, and nowhere more respected, be it noted, than in England; was it not Barrie who, in addition to observing that there was nothing more impressive than a Scotsman on the make, also remarked that there was nothing a Scot could not achieve, especially if he went among the English—and he should have known. He was echoing that closet Scot Nat, Lord Macaulay, who had pointed out that the sergeants and the foremen were invariably Scots—and yet today there are Scots who will rail against the England which was so necessary to them, and which they came, if not to dominate, at least to influence out of all proportion to Scotland’s size and numbers.

So, that’s that. Here’s tae us, wha’s like us? (Dam’ few, and they’re a’ deid.) Having got that off my chest, not only to show my pride in my race and country, but also because (like “Celtic 1, Partick Thistle 4”) it’s something that cannot be said too often, I have to add that my feeling towards England and the English is almost, though not quite, equally strong. Perhaps if you’re born in England, as I was, if you grow up there, and marry an Englishwoman of the English, and soldier with Englishmen, and have children who are half-English, half-Scottish, then England becomes part of you, and you of England. No doubt it’s a sentimental thing, based on misty ideas of Robin Hood and the bowmen of Agincourt, of Runy-mede and the Armada, of Gray’s
Elegy
and Shakespeare’s prose, of Squire Western and G. K. Chesterton and Falstaff and the Pilgrims and the Londoners unbroken by the Blitz and my fellow-Cumbrians walking into the Japanese shellfire—hopelessly romantic, you will agree, but very real too.

Unlike the Scottish internationalist who said he was impartial, he didn’t care who beat England, I am for England against anyone
—except Scotland. I know that I am an unusual Scot in this respect. I didn’t use to be; I can remember Scottish supporters carrying Stanley Matthews shoulder-high, but that was many years ago, and the world was different then.

The sudden increase in anti-English feeling, ranging from mild resentment to naked hatred, has saddened and sometimes shamed me. It is stronger now than it has been in my lifetime or, I suspect, since the Darien fiasco.
*
Why, is not difficult to understand: the partnership with England, the greatest and most beneficent of its kind in human history, lost its reason for existence with the passing of empire. The high road to England which Dr Johnson rightly described as the noblest prospect a Scot ever sees, no longer led on to the ends of the earth; the huge opportunities of imperialism, from which Scotland profited so greatly in wealth and achievement, had gone; that partnership essential to Scotland’s development was essential no more. So dissolution was inevitable, and to inward-looking people the old animosities come all the more easily when accompanied by a general decline in power and status. It’s the end of an old song, indeed; the best song the world ever heard, I think—but then, I remember it in all its glory.

It will be seen that my feeling is a nostalgic one, for a time when Scotland was the junior but never the lesser partner in a Britain that mattered in the world. Well, that time’s gone, and it may be that Scotland will be well-advised to go it alone hereafter; I just don’t know, and I confess my opposition to devolution, and to possible future independence, is not based on sound foundations of polity or economy or social philosophy; like most Scottish feelings it is based on prejudice and passion.

For example, my principal objection to a Scottish Parliament goes back to the opening sentence of this piece: I know my fellow-countryman, and the ghastly change that can come over him when he is elevated to political office, his delight in his own voice, his tendency to swell visibly like a cock on a midden, his evident conviction that he is worthy and wise beyond his fellows—you know him well, from Burns and Scott and (if you’re old enough) Willie McCulloch’s record of the “worthy baillie”. The thought of him being given a Parliament of his own, to strut and bore and feel important in, was enough to make me regret that I no longer had a newspaper’s leader column at my command.

As to those who have full independence in their sights, I suspect that they cherish private dreams not only of rolling in limousines and refreshing themselves at the troughs of office, but even of aspiring to the role (dare we say it?) of Scottish Ambassador to Washington or Paris or even the Court of St James. In this they resemble the leaders of almost every independence movement since time began—full of fine slogans and lofty ideals for the voters, but not without occasional thought to their own advantage. Garibaldis have always been thin on the ground.

My second objection was that Scotland needed another layer of government like a dose of influenza. It does nothing but clutter the corridors of power with more red tape, serving no purpose but the aggrandisement of politicians, the waste of money on the salaries of unnecessary civil servants, and the impoverishment of the unfortunate Scots who are going to have to foot an ever-lengthening bill.

That the leaders of an independent Scotland will be only too happy to trade away that independence in return for admission to the fleshpots of Brussels for themselves and their families, goes without saying; they have the example of Westminster to copy.

So while hoping against hope for the best for the dear old country, and wishing her people a greatness to match their ancestors’, I fear the worst—and that’s a right Scotch characteristic, too. I do hope
it comes right for her, because she deserves it, and I, like the rest of mankind, owe her so much. She gave me my blood and bone and being, and that loyalty, so strong in the Highlander, that comes from clanship and pride in those forefathers who were the centre of the charge in the last brave cry of “Claymore!” at Culloden, and a few years later were Wolfe’s pathfinders up the Heights of Abraham. “Aye, indeed,” as my MacDonald grandmother used to say, “it’s no small thing to be a
Friseal
, a black Fraser, one of the smiling folk—and don’t you forget it.” I shan’t, honest, and neither will Simon and Nick and young Andrew.

And yet, despite the pull of blood and history, and having finished my schooldays in Scotland, and served in a famous Highland regiment, and worked on its greatest newspaper while my children grew, and turned back at last to those western shores of my Viking MacNeill ancestors (for what is the Isle of Man but the most southerly of the Hebrides?)—despite all that, Scotland has never been home. A place to dream of returning to, perhaps, as the “Wandering Star” song has it, but above all a place to remember, although I know that the Scotland in my mind, the Scotland of summer holidays in childhood, is a never-never land that no longer exists.

But it did, and I have never felt closer to it than I did then, running with bare feet squelching inside sodden gym-shoes, splashing through shallow burns the colour of whisky, slipping on stones fringed with brown slimy weed, and scrambling up the earthy scree beyond. It was dangerous work, for that scree was the side of the Khyber Pass, and the whole countryside was hotching with Afridis; how they hadn’t picked me off as I crossed the burn was a miracle. There were always at least two of them waiting in ambush when I scrambled over the heathery lip of the scree, but I disposed of them in a hectic tussle on the springy turf, wiped my sheath-knife in the grass, chased their baaing sheep deep into the bracken, and then raced full tilt down the hillside to the fort (my parents’ caravan) to refresh myself with Creamola Foam and biscuits. When you’ve
been without food or water for three days, you need your Creamola Foam.

Caravans were quite rare in those days. The car which pulled ours was an old Argyle, with carbide lamps, a hood, and a petrol-can strapped to the running-board; many of the roads we travelled were unmetalled and maintained by solitary men with red-rimmed eyes, shovelling chips into the pot-holes from their wheelbarrows. It was a Scotland of AA scouts and tweedy men in plus-fours, of occasional hikers and quiet farm-folk who sold us milk and eggs and spoke in strange, mincing accents, of still lochs like glass in the sunlight, and bakers’ vans chugging through empty glens to our camp sites. All you needed was a level patch to pull up on at the roadside, close to a burn, sufficient flat stones to build a fireplace, a grassy stretch for cricket and rounders, and screes to climb. Pine woods were essential, too, for kindling—if you could get it before the Iroquois got you, for the cool dark depths were haunted by their war-parties, and you needed to steal softly from tree to tree, making no sound on the carpet of pine needles.

It will be gathered that I had a vivid imagination, fed by the “tuppenny bloods” which I devoured in the back of the car as we drove north from England each August, when I should have been drinking in the beauties of the scenery. “You’ll hurt your eyes,” my parents would say. “Look, there’s Ben Hooligan, and Tilliegollacher Castle, and just over that hill is where your great-grandfather broke his leg.” Often they would bicker gently about whether it was, in fact, Tilliegollacher or some other unpronounceable place—it might have been Glengoolicky or Aberinver or the wee house where Donald was sick after eating the cheese or the Camerons massacred somebody; I would leave them to it and get on with the Wolf of Kabul or Red Circle School, or fratch with my big sister on the back seat.