More on the matter of Britain

                                             More Scottish elements in Arthurian legends...

An extended comment on my previous post from Aelianus deserves more than a combox reply:

I don't understand the statement "in Arthurian legend, Scotland is rather marginal". A great swathe of the major characters in the legend are from the part of Britain that would later become Scotland: Sir Gawain of Orkney and Lothian, his father King Lot (after whom Lothian is supposed to be named), his brothers Sir Agravain, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gareth and Sir Mordredhis their sister St Teneu and her son St Mungo founder of Glasgow. King Urien of Rheged and his son Sir Ywain. These are hardly marginal figures in the story. The earliest reference to Arthur is in Y Gododdin the oldest literary work deriving from the area of modern Scotland. What the Arthurian tales point to is that this territory is more fundamentally and originally British than it is Scottish just as they draw attention to the antecedent Britishness of Lloegyr. The evidence in that film that there was no Anglo-Saxon invasion proves no such thing. It simply points to the fact that Saxons had been raiding the province of Britannia for many centuries, that much of the territory was unprepared to resist and that they never (even after the conquest) made up more than a minority of the population (like any military aristocracy).

First, thanks for the response. One of the ways in which myths and deep stories about nations and landscapes work is by provoking discussion and disagreement: what we are doing here is in part a tribute to that depth and abding importance.

Turning to the specific points raised, I'll begin by repeating my (incomplete) reply in the combox:

You'll note that, in context, the 'statement' is not left unchallenged.

In addition to the points in the blog post, I'd add: 1) whatever the potential for developing the 'Scottish' elements within the Matter, my impression (and I accept that discerning the cultural force of narratives is a tricky business) is that generally this has not been done. The Arthurian cycle is predominantly felt as a Southern English narrative, probably centred in Winchester or Glastonbury. (The only quick evidence I can provide for this is that I've put into the blog: that reworkings that emphasise Scottish elements are presented as self consciously revisionist.)

In short, I don't think the Arthurian legends are as central to the Scottish mythos as they are to the English one. (I put aside the Welsh case simply because it has complexities which I'm simply not able to do justice to.) My main basis for that is simply a factual claim: when one thinks of the legends and stories that have been told and retold over the years, Scottish writers have tended not to concentrate on Arthur in the same way that English ones have. (As a factual claim, it is of course open to challenge and I'd be particularly interested if anyone could point me in the direction of scholarly literature on the use of the Matter of Britain in pre-modern Scotland.) Certainly, taking Professor Roberts' film as itself a reperformance of the Matter of Britain, that  didn't have much to say about Scotland. (And of the others I mentioned in the original blogpost, all have Scotland literally on the margins, as the stories are located in the Borders.)

Now if that empirical observation is true, then the next question is why that might be true? What might cause that lack of attention? That's quite a big discussion, but some elements spring to mind immediately. First, the struggle between Saxon and Briton is not even plausibly as central to Scottish narrative identity as it is to English. Moreover, that sense of two peoples' clashing is repeated again and again in English history in a way that it isn't in Scottish. (One thinks here especially of the clash between Norman and Saxon for which, I'd speculate, the Arthurian clash between Briton and Saxon often functions as a (safer) imaginative replacement.) For Scotland, the clash is between (at least) Irish, British, Pictish and Saxon identities, with nothing like the complete replacement of Brittonic by English until the relatively modern domination of English over Gaelic (and note then it is Goidelic Gaelic, not the Brittonic of Arthur). Secondly, the political centrality of the various tensions between the identities of British/French, Welsh/British and Romanitas/barbarian which are central to much of the Arthurian cycle are arguably less central to Scotland. For example, there is the absence of the Edward I's and the Tudor need to find a location for Welshness within the English vision of royal power. Finally, there is the availability of alternative, more powerful mythoi: that of the struggle of Scotland against England (The Brus/Braveheart); that of the struggle of Gael against Lowlander (Scott).

Now I don't know how much of that (speculation) would ultimately be defensible. But perhaps the biggest absence in the Arthurian cycle is of the tension between Gael and Saxon: as Aelianus points out, the 'Scottish' element in the cycle is confined mostly to Southern Scotland and the Kingdom of Strathclyde: as noted above, Scotland literally is marginal to the imaginary of the cycle as being predominantly confined to the Southern Borders. Moreover, as medieval Scotland viewed itself as Scottish (ie Goidelic), a narrative that marginalised that identity would be unlikely to have much purchase:

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown.

They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous.

Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today.

The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since.

 

(From the Declaration of Arbroath 1320 here. Emphases mine.)

 

The key point of the original blogpost was this: Scotland (like all nations) needs an imaginative (mythic) engagement with its past. Certainly as performed in Roberts' programme, there was nothing that seemed able to contribute to that imaginative engagement except by way of absence. To point that our, as Angus MacNeil did, is simply fair comment.

 

So my main plea is that both Unionists and Nationalists think more deeply about the stories they want to tell and the myths they would use. Perhaps the Matter of Britain can provide such basis: if so, please get on with it. (The general importance of good myth like the Matter of Britain is that it allows the interpenetration of many competing values and experiences: Arthur, for example, deals with personal tragedy (adultery), political tragedy (civil war) and the supernatural end of man (the Quest for the Grail). Braveheart on the whole just deals with thumping invaders over the head.) My suspicions remain that, for the various reasons adumbrated, the Matter of Britain is not up to that task of deepening the imaginative construction of Scotland.

 

But that leaves open the question of what is up to that task. And really, we have to do better than  'the UK is lovely and Nicola Sturgeon is a tosser' or 'The Tories eat babies and everything was awful in the past and will be great in the future'...

[On the issue of whether the Saxons invaded or came bringing trinkets and culture -I have no view.]

Scotland: Group feeling and the Matter of Britain

                                                                 A blogger stirs...

The howffs and wynds of Scotland are full of talk about Ibn-Khaldun's concept of asabiyyah or group feeling...

My particular thoughts on this were prompted by Alice Roberts' documentary on King Arthur and a consequent discussion on Twitter, as well as an earlier tweet by (Britain's leading theologian) John Milbank suggesting that 'The Matter of Britain' was central to British identity. (Having just wasted an hour or so trying to find that tweet, I may have to consign it to an existence just as mythical as King Arthur's own. However, if Milbank did not tweet it, he really ought to have. I offer this article as evidence that the existence of the tweet is true, even if not real. (Or perhaps vice versa.))

Anyway, let's take this claim that the Matter of Britain is central to 'our' identity. (We'll come back to that 'our'.) It had me mulling over the thought that, in Arthurian legend, Scotland is rather marginal. Now my second thought is to question whether or not that first thought is true. Certainly, there are Scottish elements: at random, I can think of Alistair Moffat's identification of Roxburgh as Camelot, Nikolai Tolstoy's search for Merlin in the Lowlands, and Clive Owen's knocking around north of Hadrian's Wall in the 2004 King Arthur. But much of this (and I note that the first three things that spring to my mind are modern contributions to the Matter) are self-consciously revisionist -which suggests that the more traditional working of the Matter plays them down.

So I'm not sure, but my impression is that Scotland generally is marginal to the Matter, with the possible exception of the Lowlands (which by definition can only be part of any Scottish national narrative). If we take the (perhaps mythical) Milbank tweet as true, then that is a problem for British identity. And even if it is not true, it is at least the starting point for considering how narratives contribute to asabiyyah and how the central stories of the British Isles (among which the Arthurian legends are an important strand) contribute to our senses of British or Scottish identity.

And into this mulling plunged Professor Roberts. Now there is a clearly existent tweet here which is relevant:

It's because the word 'Celts' was never applied in antiquity to the inhabitants of Britain. People first started doing so in the 18th century. https://t.co/uUKyxFd23K

— Tom Holland (@holland_tom) 17 September 2018

Holland is of course correct, but it is perhaps a rather uncharitable take on what Angus MacNeil was trying to say. In Roberts' programme, much was made of how the 'conflict' between Anglo-Saxons and native Britons was important to understanding the history of the 'nation' (the singular was clearly used at the beginning of the programme). More generally, the programme was focused on arguing that an important part of our history was being misrepresented if it were believed that the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain rather than drifted in peacefully and exerted a cultural influence over the existing population. But although the programme was ostensibly about an important piece of our national history, very little was said about Scotland and (very oddly for a piece about Arthur) Welsh history. Indeed, the only mention of Scotland that I caught was right at the end when (rather quickly I thought) an understanding of early mediaeval Britain as divided into a south-eastern bit oriented culturally to the continent and a north-western bit oriented towards the Atlantic seaboard was presented. (As an aside, this was rather a pregnant view given the traditional North-South divide and Brexit. It was perhaps odd that one narrative aspect of British history -the nature of the Anglo-Saxon influence- was subject to a sort of revisionist interpretation, while perhaps a much more currently potent narrative -on the split between two sorts of Britain- was not only reinforced but actually extended into deeper cultural time but without much comment.)

So I take it that MacNeil's point was that, in what was ostensibly a programme about an important part of our national story, very little attention was paid to the (what we now call) Celtic parts of the British Isles (with the exception of Cornwall). And although allowing for the inherent subjectivity of a reaction to a medium like television, where there is an inability (or at least general lack in practice) of going back to test one's impressions, I think that take on the programme is fair. Now of course, there are perhaps good answers to this. Not every programme has to be about Scotland. Not even every 'Matter of Britain' programme has to be about Scotland. But IF the programme is claimed to be about 'our' history, and if there is rather a tendency to slide within the programme between the use of Britons/British/Britain as applying to the pre-Saxon peoples/land and applying to the modern peoples/land (I think there was, although again, I am open to different views on this), it's not unreasonable, certainly from a Nationalist MP, to expect some querying.

My own view is that it's perfectly reasonable for Roberts to make a programme which elides Scotland and Scottish identity. (Why on earth would one expect everyone to worry about this as a subject?) But equally, it's perfectly reasonable for others who are more concerned about this area to point out some of the problems in the treatment. And specifically, in a programme that seemed to be claiming to make points relevant to a modern British identity, to note that almost nothing was said about Scotland. At one level, this is just a well-worn point about the modern UK: by default, a lot of what is claimed to be British is in fact just about England. (And this will raise again familiar questions about those generators of modern narrative, the modern media.)

But there is a deeper level at which narratives about British national identity which just leave out Scotland no longer work. Were I convinced Unionist, I would simply note that, if I want to hold the various nations of the UK together, the asabiyyah of those nations, particularly Scotland, has moved on and that, consequently, the narratives that construct that imagined community of the UK also have to move on if you want them to work as a unifying force. Crudely, a Scottish viewer watching Roberts' programme is not going to see it as his or her Our Island Story. That wouldn't matter if the programme were simply framed as an investigation into the fairly niche question of whether the Saxons came armed or in peace. But it wasn't. And the failure to notice that (let alone acknowledge it as a problem) is what bedevils a lot of modern Unionism. The old narratives based on a common quest for Empire and a common heritage of Protestantism no longer work. If a new set of Unionist narratives is going to be constructed, I'd suggest, they need to take account of the changes in Scottish asabiyyah and work with them.

Putting aside those immediate questions of Unionism/Nationalism, more importantly, asabiyyah in Scotland generally has to wrestle with the narrative element of that identity. And the difficulty in applying one important British Isles narrative, 'The Matter of Britain', simply emphasises the difficulty of applying any narrative to Scotland which has some historical and mythical depth: this is compounded by a modern Nationalism that prides itself on being progressive and thus anti-past and anti-myth; and the thinness of any historical narratives that are knocking around. (Think Braveheart.) For a Catholic conservative, imaginative engagement with space and time is essential: oikophilia is essentially an imaginative act and without it, we inhabit a wasteland. Neither Unionism nor Nationalism is really developing those sorts of imaginative depths at the moment. I'm not sure whether this is just a temporary accident, or whether it says something deeper about Scottish culture: a disassociation from enchantment caused by the Reformation or perhaps the abandonment of acquired essentially English narratives such as Roberts' that worked for a time but no longer. In any case, the modern disenchantment of the world seems particularly acute up here in North Britain.

Oswald Mosley: enthusiasm and the technocratic state

                                      Mosley shortly before his Luxton Bus Depot speech

Stephen Dorril's 2006 biography of Oswald Mosley contrasts with Skidelsky's earlier book (and unsurprisingly with Mosley's autobiography) in giving a thoroughly unfavourable portrait of Britain's lost fascist leader. Although it's been a long while since I read the latter two works, Dorril's interpretation of Mosley's life undermines claims of his economic expertise and general intelligence, quite apart from presenting his character as one of a complete cad. (Personally, I find it convincing.)

That said, I think it does still suggest that one of the keys to understanding Mosley was his attempt to solve the problems of unemployment and poverty by means of decisive action to impose (broadly) Keynesian solutions. And at root of this attempt is a very current political problem: how to generate a sufficient popular enthusiasm for that driest of dry things: an imposed, technocratic solution to economic problems. Despite Dorril's rather detailed undermining of any claim that Mosley was just an anti-Semite by convenience, the established view that this was a large part of his anti-Semitism survives:

Writers on British fascism vary from the soft-hearted Lord Skidelsky to tough-minded researchers from the East End. On one point, they agree: Mosley's decision to play the race card was entirely cynical. He may have bent the knee to Hitler and Mussolini, but he wasn't more or less racist than any other member of the aristocracy. He embraced anti-semitism as it was the best way to appeal to the East End voters he thought would propel him back to the people around him, Mosley was never a convinced racist,' said Francis Beckett, the best of the tough-minded historians. 'Needless to add, that doesn't mean that he was better than them.'  [Nick Cohen here]

Putting aside the detailed examination of Mosley's actual motivations here, in principle, it is entirely plausible that someone trying to sell politically technocratic and elitist solutions to complex problems would try to link them to rather more exciting activities such as racism, marching up and down and street fighting. If Mosley's own motivations were perhaps not entirely so clear sighted, it would be perfectly reasonable to invent someone whose motivations were...

                                                  
                                                   Laibach looking decidedly antifa

To the extent that I understand Zizek (and I'd admit that's to a very limited extent indeed) part of his fascination with the bands Rammstein and Laibach rests on their using Fascist appearances for 'progressive' purposes:

"They’re very hard - I think they’re extremely progressive. It’s totally wrong to read them as almost a proto-fascist band. My god, they explicitly supported Die Linke, the leftists there, and so on. I like their extremely subversive from within, undermining of all this - you know? Like, it gives me pleasure. Psychologically I’m a fascist - everyone knows it, no? Who published this - Daily everyone knows it, no? Who published this - Daily Telegraph? That jerk who pronounced me a leftist fascist, you know? Alan Johnson or who? So - I mean - I think we should take over these - all of these - authoritarian gestures, unity, leader, sacrifice, f*ck it! Why not? No? So, Rammstein are my guys." [Zizek here]

“The minimal elements of the Nazi ideology enacted by Rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment,” Slavoj Zizek informs us in the documentary film The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) as frontman Till Lindemann goose-steps across a stage. “Enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed in some minimal ticks, gestures which do not have precise ideological meaning. What Rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their Nazi articulation. It allows us to enjoy them in their pre-ideological state. The way to fight Nazism is to enjoy these elements, ridiculous as they were here, by suspending the Nazi’s horizon of meaning. This way you undermine Nazism from within." [Here]

The detachability of Fascist spectacle from Fascist policy is, in essence, Mosley's cynicism: the attachment of 'libidinally invested' fashy elements such as para-militarism to technocratic economics is an attempted solution to get popular buy-in to necessary, but unexciting policies.

Every now and then on social media you'll get a to-and-fro about whether Fascists are socialist or conservative. Great fun for all involved, no doubt, but usually no more than knockabout stuff. But certainly, some 'progressives' do adopt libidinally invested (ie fun) elements such as threatening to punch people, parading, and even anti-Semitism (sorry, anti-Zionism) which earlier times claimed as Fascist. (Undoubtedly, genuinely self-identified Nazis also do this. On the other hand, genuine, Burkean conservatives tend to stroll round individually in worn tweeds, assaulting passersby with superior smirks.)  Putting that aside, modern progressivism does seem to have found a way arbitrarily to attach libidinally invested elements to technocratic, dull policies. The Remain campaign, for example, seems to have convinced itself that the technocratic EU is the natural home for a full blown erotic attachment enjoyable in itself and able to generate even more joyful practices such as the anathematisation of opponents. A similar movement is seen in the way that modern 'Scottish civic' nationalism generates an erotic commitment to the establishment of technocratic, modern government instead of rule by obscurantist British aristos.

I'm not really interested here in arguing that modern progressives are Fascists or even 'fashy', although I do think they have at the least attached enjoyable 'authoritarian gestures' to socialist substance. My main point here is that progressivism quite recently seems to have imitated a genuine Fascist (Mosley) in attaching erotically charged elements to dull, technocratic ends. Even if those elements are not always the same as Mosley's, they do resemble his in their function: to make technocracy fun. 

And contrast with that the conservatism of Russell Kirk or Edmund Burke: a disavowal of the end of technocratic government in favour of government as prudence; moreover, a disavowal of the means of enthusiasm in favour of temperance and an Augustinian suspicion of the possibility of political Utopianism. Most importantly, there is a disavowal of the arbitrary attachment of libidinally charged elements to political ends, in favour of the reflective discernment of the nature of things, where there is an intimate, sacramental relationship between what is seen and loved as a means, and what is willed as an end.

[An afterthought: traditional blood and soil nationalism need not anathematise other nations. A love of one's own home and culture is entirely compatible with an cknowledgement that others have their own homes and their own erotic commitment to them. Civic nationalism on the other hand is predicated on our being good people and our opponents being bad people. Liberation from a controlling power in the first case in principle at least ends the hatred of the imperial nation; in the second case, the imperial power remains, no longer an oppressor perhaps, but still bad people full of bad habits. To be concrete: in the eyes of progressive nationalists, if Scotland were ever liberated from England, England would remain full of cruel toffs, intent on starving the poor and destroying foxes and the NHS.]

Culture in Scotland: the problem of substance rather than simply institutions

Nicola Sturgeon tames Scotland by Gerard Burns 

There has been a flurry of 'conservative' (I'm never quite sure how to describe this/my approach, but 'conservative' will do as a placeholder) comment on the stifling cultural and political hegemony of modern Scotland. Kenneth Roy's piece in the Scottish Review will do as an example:

This is the nature of the malaise: it seems that everyone has too much to lose by challenging an increasingly monolithic political establishment, particularly when the most influential voices in the arts and media have allowed themselves to become cheerleaders for that establishment. Is this really how a healthy democracy should function? Journalism works best when it is scrutinising and challenging the established order, not meekly acquiescing; the same is surely true of fiction, poetry and the performing arts. But in Scotland the normal rules of engagement have been turned on their head: if we know what is good for us, we sing from the same patriotic song-sheet, picking up our allotted crumb from the breadboard of Creative Scotland, hoping for a good review from Alan Taylor, hearing no evil, seeing no evil, until the last dissenter has been strangled with the last rolled-up copy of the Sunday Herald.

I've got considerable sympathy for this view, but more (and in more detail) needs to be said. First, one of the problems of devolution, let alone the push for more powers and ultimately independence, is that more powers now exist to exercise hegemony than did (say) fifty years ago. In my adult life, I have never noticed a particularly varied political or cultural debate in Scotland.  Anyone who encountered the Labour hegemony that existed until recently would not immediately have thought that they had encountered a Golden Age of intellectual curiosity. But it's undoubtedly true that 'blob' thinking now has more levers to operate in Scotland. So the first observation is that hegemony has always existed in modern Scotland but it now has more power to do damage.

Secondly, it is hardly the fault of the SNP that every other party in Scotland has decided to become incompetent. Although this is (perhaps) slightly overstating the case, the collapse of Scottish Conservatism, UK Liberalism and the Scottish (and perhaps UK?) Labour Party is not the fault of the SNP although they have clearly benefited from it. It is possible that Scottish Conservatism is staging a revival. Personally, I doubt this, but in any case there seems little likelihood in the near future of its being able to mount the sort of serious opposition to the SNP that Labour once was capable of. The resulting hegemony is undoubtedly regrettable, but the fault (and solution) is more to do with the other parties than the SNP.

Thirdly, and remaining with 'conservatism' for a while, at the moment, most criticism of the existing hegemony is on the grounds of a) competence and b) Unionism. That's fine and necessary, but as a long term strategy, it's limited. Issues of competence are difficult to assess in real time and unless Unionism becomes more than a simple economic case ('independence is going to cost you') it's probably going to become increasingly ineffective as people get used to the message as a background noise and certainly is going to lack impact on the wider cultural field.

And it's this wider cultural field that I want to focus on. Modern Scottish Nationalism has, in a remarkably short period of time, managed to convince large numbers of people, perhaps even a majority, that Scotland is progressive. The details of what this means are essentially fuzzy, but as a civil religion it certainly contains a familiar kit of benedictions and comminations. Blessed are the multicultural. Cursed are the homophobic. Blessed are those exploring their own sexuality. Cursed are those who believe in tradition. Etc. Etc. When coupled with a general tendency in the West for cultural elites to be overwhelmingly progressive (the Heterodox Academy is a good source on this), the pre-existing tendency to blob thinking in Scotland, as well as the identification of Scottish Nationalism with the project of becoming (even) more progressive than England, we have a recipe for the sort of stifling cultural control that Roy identifies.

Certainly, I would like to see a more effective political opposition to the SNP, not because I am particularly hostile to the SNP, but because it is unhealthy for any party to feel it is invulnerable. [Let me note here that there is a key issue that rarely seems to be raised: the SNP used to be regarded by most Nationalists I know as a temporary coalition which would dissolve upon independence. The need now to exist as a (devolved) government before independence has put this coalition identity in the background while the sort of effective discipline and clear policies required for electable government are practised. The resulting dilemmas for supporters of independence who are opposed to SNP progressivism have been insufficiently explored.] But until one or more of the other parties manages to pull itself into shape and become presentable as a potential opposition, that's not going to happen. And it's foolish to blame the SNP for that. Part of the solution has to be the creation of a vision of Scotland that is substantially different from the progressive vision of the SNP. (And it's worth noting here that the much of the most effective criticism at the moment seems to be coming from those who think that the SNP is insufficiently progressive.) And more needs to be said here than simply a endorsement of the Union: what sort of society would be better, aside from the question of whether or not that society is better realized within or outwith the UK?

Back to Roy's essay. Imagine a situation ten years in the future when (say) complete independence is off the agenda. The SNP will still be campaigning for a different, more progressive Scotland to differentiate itself from the UK culturally. Other than on economic reforms, the Conservative Party will be as progressive in all essentials as the SNP, and the Corbynite Left and the Greens will be urging even more progressivism. What reason is there to think that cultural life in Scotland will not still be as stiflingly progressive as it is now?

In sum, cultural and political hegemony is a problem in modern Scotland, but breaking the SNP's monopoly of political power is only one (and I think a minor) aspect of that problem. I see no sign that, even without an assured political control over cultural institutions, the dominance of a a certain progressive viewpoint will be abandoned. As I have said many times before, the question of Independence is secondary to the question of what sort of society we should live in, and the sort of progressivism that the SNP promotes is dominant in Scotland far beyond that party.

Three final, concrete illustrations. The current stooshie over the Named Person scheme is certainly the fault of the SNP. But it is also the fault of a cultural and political climate that makes it very difficult to articulate the sort of truth about the central place of the biological family that the Supreme Court judges quoted from international law (section 72):

The Preamble to the UNCRC states:

“the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and wellbeing of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.”

 

Many articles in the UNCRC acknowledge that it is the right and responsibility of parents to bring up their children. Thus article 3(2) requires States Parties, in their actions to protect a child’s wellbeing, to take into account the rights and duties of his or her parents or other individuals legally responsible for him or her; article 5 requires States Parties to respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, other family or community members or others legally responsible for the child to provide appropriate direction and guidance to the child in the exercise of his or her rights under the Convention; article 14(2) makes similar provision in relation to the child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; article 27(2) emphasises that the parents have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capabilities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s development; article 18(1) provides that:

     “States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both     parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may  be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern.” (Emphasis supplied)

(When the judgment came out, I remember some Twitter comment describing that commonsense attitude as 'medieval'...)

Unless that sort of 'conservative' viewpoint has access to cultural institutions such as Roy refers to, in sufficient numbers and with sufficient internal variety to give it intellectual heft (another problem just now),  whether inside or outside the UK we are sunk.

Secondly, Roy allows himself a sideswipe at Neal Ascherson. In particular, he mentions Andrew O'Hagan's difficulties with Nationalists after criticizing him. I assume in particular he is thinking of the LRB review by O'Hagan of Ascherson's Stone Voices. (Here.) Now you can think what you like of Ascherson and indeed of Stone Voices. (For what it's worth, I think neither beyond criticism, but am profoundly grateful to Ascherson for over the years of his Observer columns showing something to a younger me of what intellectual life might be like, and to Stone Voices for a stimulating piece of psychogeography, particularly when read (as I did) in Kilmartin Glen.) Of course, Ascherson should be argued with. But note from what perspective O'Hagan does so:

There is, as Nairn puts it, a ‘tantalising sense of redemption which always informs nostalgia’, but the Scottish people cannot afford to get stuck there any longer, and Scotland must go on now to establish its role in bringing about a new United Kingdom within a new Europe. In the manner of Stephen Dedalus, we might do better to see Scotland’s conscience as ‘uncreated’; for while we must admit that Ascherson’s stones are interesting, they are not as interesting as people. Nationalism in Scotland is a place where good men and women busy themselves shaking the dead hand of the past, but the naming of a tradition is not the same as the forging of a nation, and modern Scotland, now more than ever, needs a new way of thinking, a new kind of relation to the old, a way to live, a way to make itself better than the badness that’s been and the badness to come. The question of what the past amounted to can lie about the grass.
 

So Ascherson, the paradigm of a progressive intellectual, complete with endorsements from Hobsbawm and an Eton education, is criticized by being insufficiently progressive, too interested in the past, too conservative. The usual Scottish substantive hegemonic game: you are wrong because I am more progressive than you. Am I really, as a social conservative, supposed to celebrate this iteration of the progressive mindset as an unproblematic example of well placed criticism suppressed by evil Nats? (Just imagine reading the above O'Hagan paragraph to Roger Scruton. With whom do you think his sympathies might lie?)

Thirdly and finally, Roy raises the question of the enforced reading of Scottish texts in Scottish schools. Quite why this should be objectionable is beyond me. (If it were a matter of only reading Scottish texts, that would be different.) From those of my children who had to study English at Higher, I can recall only two Scottish texts: Jekyll and Hyde and Robin Jenkins' The Cone Gatherers. Neither strike me as unreasonable (whatever else I'd like to say about the thinness of the Higher curriculum). Stevenson's text surely earns its place as a world classic. Jenkins', whilst not my favourite of his works (Fergus Lamont, if you want to know), is a Christian parable about suffering and innocence. Again, why should a conservative object a) to some awareness of one's local culture and b) in particular, these books?

Overall, I think the problem lies more in the absence of lively conservative cultural institutions within Scotland capable of articulating and even disagreeing on what is wrong with progressivism. (Alistair Darling makes the point in his introduction to Tom Gallagher's Scotland Now about the absence of " 'think tank' capacity", a lack particularly evident in the reasoned expression of conservative views beyond Unionism.) Too much rests on the sort of campaigning talk along the lines of  'my friend's enemy is my enemy'. The mere fact that a given commentator opposes the SNP  is not enough to endorse their views uncritically; the mere fact that a given view is held by supporters of the SNP is not enough to dismiss them.

Brexit and on not getting distracted

 

Oh, look! An Article 50!

While I write this, I'm conscious of having made explicit or implicit promises to a number of people to write about particular issues on this blog and not yet having got round to it. Apologies. I remember who you are even if you've given up on me!

As is obvious, I'm easily distracted. Given this is my personal blog, I put up even less of a struggle against that tendency here than I would in other parts of my life. But as we enter into a series of processes around Brexit which could drag on for years, it's important that 'we' (ie all those who have broad sympathies with Catholic social teaching) don't get distracted by the epiphenomena of political life. One of the reasons why I've said little on Brexit here (besides cowardice and personal confusion) is that I saw little prospect of anything fundamental being changed by either result. Let's take again Russell Kirk's list of conservative principles as a rough starting point. Whatever emerges from the complex series of energies that will emerge from the event of Brexit, I see no likelihood of the secularising demolition of the little platoons being reversed by a UK government. David Cameron's resignation speech betrays many of the obsessions of modern politics:

1) Focus on the needs of international financial markets
2) Undermining natural marriage as a basis for procreation and education of children
3) A blindness to the complex layers of societies that exist below and above the State
4) A thin understanding of national culture

When you add into that the inevitable problems with Scottish Independence that will arise as a result of an Independence referendum that made much of the dangers of Scotland being forced out of the EU being trumped by an EU referendum that has forced Scotland out of the EU against the overwhelming popular Scottish vote, there are more than enough distractions to keep us all going for a while. But, to repeat something I've said many times before, unless some people are thinking and talking about the more permanent things of the polis, we will find ourselves arguing about squirrels rather the fundamental and harmful changes in social life that almost everyone in ephemeral politics seems to find agreeable.

Just for a starter:

a) The absence of any sort of supernatural order and end which underlies ephemeral politics and a culture which feeds the soul.
b) The importance of nation and national culture and the inadequacy of the remains of imperial nationalisms to do justice to this.
c) The need to preserve natural family life as the primary vehicle of individuals' engagement with the past and the future.
d) The promotion of the little platoons of civil society.
e) The promotion of international order which respects subsidiarity and escapes from bureacratic, progressivist technocracy.

As a coda, I note that Patrick Harvie in The National is making similar sounding noises to me although in substance from an entirely opposed position:

But the underlying problem will still be there whether the result is Leave or Remain – the need for a compelling politics of the common good that is internationalist and unites people instead of dividing them. Greece and Spain have shown that this is possible, and the ground for it seems more fertile in Scotland than in much of the UK. But there remains much work to turn that potential into reality across Europe as a whole.
Scotland can play an important role in that, building relationships with progressive forces across Europe, and whether our immediate goal is now to defend our rights as current EU citizens in the wake of a Brexit vote or, as I fervently hope, to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard at the EU table with the UK as a remaining member state, we’ll need to keep all options open.

To borrow the metaphor I've used before, progressives like Harvie have established the landscape within which all ephemeral politics is now conducted. Unless (at least sometimes) we take our eyes off the pretty squirrels running around in this landscape and start exploring the landscape itself, there is little hope for the politics of the future.

Blue thoughts after the Holyrood election...

                                                       
                                                               Laozi heads West...

There is really no pleasing some people (ie me). I know (big C) Conservatives are jumping up and down at boosting their numbers of MSPs in the Scottish parliament, but I'm afraid it hasn't managed to pierce my Eeyore-ish take on Scottish politics. Here's why.

1) I have absolutely no idea why Unionists are proclaiming the death of the SNP and the death of a second Indy referendum. The SNP plus the Greens form a majority in the new parliament and both are pro-independence and 'progressive'. Indeed, the Greens are so progressive that it seems an inadequate term for them. The SNP vote didn't drop. There is still a pro-independence majority in Holyrood. The SNP is liable to find itself propelled in even more progressive directions. None of this sounds obviously good to me.

2) The Conservatives increased their seats markedly and Labour fell. But the Conservatives won pretty much on the sole issue of the Union. Ruth Davidson is a self declared progressive and ran a campaign that was noticeably light on policy (other than being pro-Union). Labour seems at least to be considering a drift to the Corbynista Left in Scotland as a solution to its ills. (Won't work, but that's for another day.) Scottish politics, by dint of the Conservatives' tactics, is now frozen in a binary opposition: pro and anti independence.

3) Nobody in Scotland seems to be talking in terms of that area of Blue Labour/Red Tory/(Purple Nats?) which seems the natural (small c) social conservative heartland. Indeed, Scottish political punditry seems to have been reduced to a permanent shifting of sauce bottles around the dining table in order to map out precisely how the Boche ('whoever we're agin') can be outwitted in the next campaign rather than reflection on how to put the permanent things of life on a better footing. (I except from this certain public intellectuals on the Left who do discuss such matters but are obviously bawheids.)

Political life in Scotland is becoming paralysed by the Independence question and frankly the Conservative 'success' is part of that paralysis. Unless some Scottish conservative commentators start putting the exciting but pointless exchange of insults aside and start thinking about convincing future generations of the merit of genuinely conservative principles (start here), then it won't matter very much whether we're governed badly from Westminster or badly from Holyrood.

Walter Scott on 'Enlightenment values' and David Hume

                                                       Henry Mackenize (by Raeburn)

Those who have been reading this blog for a while may have wondered where I was in my reading of Sir Walter Scott's complete works. The short answer is that I am roughly 80% through and now in the middle of his journals...

In my last post, I commented on Nick Cohen's problematic use of 'Enlightenment values'. Scott touches on the Scottish Enlightenment a number of times in his works (I'm particularly tempted to write something on the Burkean principles of his essays on improving woodland) but I recently came across this in his review of MacKenzie's biography of John Home (writer of the Douglas):

Neither is it only to Scotland that these annals are interesting. There were men of literature in Edinburgh before she was renowned for romances, reviews, and magazines--

    "Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona;" [Brave men have lived before Agamemnon]

and a single glance at the authors and men of science who dignified the last generation, will serve to show that, in those days, there were giants in the North. The names of Hume, Robertson, Fergusson, stand high in the list of British historians. Adam Smith was the father of the economical system in Britain, and his standard work will long continue the text-book of that science. Dr. Black, as a chemist, opened that path of discovery which has since been prosecuted with such splendid success. Of metaphysicians, Scotland boasted, perhaps, but too many: to Hume and Fergusson we must add Reid, and, though younger, yet of the same school, Mr. Dugald Stewart. In natural philosophy, Scotland could present Professor Robison, James Watt, whose inventions have led the way to the triumphs of human skill over the elements, and Clerk, of Eldin, who taught the British seaman the road to assured conquest. Others we could mention; but these form a phalanx, whose reputation was neither confined to their narrow, poor, and rugged native country, nor to England and the British dominions, but known and respected wherever learning, philosophy, and science were honoured.

[From Minor Prose Works]


It's worth noting a few points here. First, nowhere is the term 'Scottish Enlightenment' or even 'Enlightenment' mentioned. This is to be expected as Wikipedia notes:

The term "Enlightenment" emerged in English in the later part of the 19th century, with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of the French term 'Lumières' (used first by Dubos in 1733 and already well established by 1751). From Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" ("Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?") the German term became 'Aufklärung' (aufklären = to illuminate; sich aufklären = to clear up). However, scholars have never agreed on a definition of the Enlightenment, or on its chronological or geographical extent. Terms like "les Lumières" (French), "illuminismo" (Italian), "ilustración" (Spanish) and "Aufklärung" (German) referred to partly overlapping movements. Not until the late nineteenth century did English scholars agree they were talking about "the Enlightenment."

Secondly, Scott conceptualizes 'the Enlightenment' in personal ('the authors and men of science who dignified the last generation') and local terms ('their narrow, poor, and rugged native country'). In other words, it is a circle of very talented and different individuals who were in regular and friendly intercourse with each other despite (or even because of) their great differences. (That impression in only reinforced by the extended anecdotes especially about David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Fergusson taken from Home's biography which are quoted in the rest of the review.)

Thirdly, the 'Enlightenment' is centred on effectiveness and practicality (' who taught the British seaman the road to assured conquest') rather than abstract ideas ("Of metaphysicians, Scotland boasted, perhaps, but too many").

I doubt whether any of this is a surprise to anyone who has read anything about 'the Scottish Enlightenment'. But there are far too many who are willing to convert 'the Enlightenment' into a banner under which (eg) unrestrained free speech of the coarsest variety can be justified. Whatever the merits of such a view, it is not the same as the culture of a circle of talented men 'known and respected wherever learning, philosophy, and science were honoured'. Although I'm thinking here particularly of secularist blowhards such as Nick Cohen, you will also find a tendency to essentialize (and reject) Enlightenment values in conservative Catholic circles (ie mine). I'm certainly not suggesting that the views of lightly sceptical Scottish Protestants will ever fit neatly into a Catholic world view, but, equally, I certain that it is intellectual suicide to hand over uncontested to the secularists an important part of the intellectual history of modernity.

Free and cordial communication of sentiments, the natural play of fancy and good-humour, which prevailed among the circle of men whom I have described. It was very different from that display of learning -that prize fighting of wit, which distinguished a literary circle of our sister country...


[Mackenzie quoted in Scott's review]

So let's celebrate some of the values of the Scottish Enlightenment: to honour substantive learning, philosophy and science rather than the ill tempered shallowpate; to be sceptical of dogmatic political fashions and prize the conservatism born of a deep reading in history; to celebrate conviviality, friendship, religion and national pride, rather than deracinated rage of pure subjectivity. Oh, and reticence and tact as well:

The celebrated David Hume, the philosopher and historian, was certainly the most distinguished person in the cycle [sic]. That he was most unhappy in permitting the acuteness of his talents, and the pride arising from the consciousness of possessing them, to involve him in a maze of sceptical illusions, is most undeniable; as well as that he was highly culpable in giving to the world the miserable results of his leisure. Mr Mackenzie states, in mitigation, not in exculpation, that the great Pyrrhonist--

"had, in the language which the Grecian historian applies to an illustrious Roman, two minds, one which indulged in the metaphysical scepticism which his genius could invent, but which it could not always disentangle; another, simple, natural, and playful, which made his conversation delightful to his friends, and even frequently conciliated men who principles of belief, his philosophical doubts if they had not power to shake, had grieved and offended. Duirng the latter period of his lfe, I was frequently in his company amidst persons of genuine piety, and I never heard him venture a remark at which such men, or ladies -still more susceptible than men -could take offence. His good-nature and benevolence prevented such an injury to his hearers: it was unfortunate that he often forgot what injury some of his writings might do to his readers."

[Update: (20/1/16)

The excellent @IrishPhilosophy added the following information:

https://twitter.com/IrishPhilosophy/status/689843303790067712

and

https://twitter.com/IrishPhilosophy/status/689844147231002624

The WR Scott book was published in 1900 -which put the first use of the 'Scottish Enlightenment' even later than I suggested above. ]

More thoughts on what Scottish conservatives can learn from the US...

Having had a chance to think a little more about my previous blog on the subject...

There are some presumptions in my treatment of this question that were not clear to me but (in part as a result of helpful combox challenges) have become clearer. In no particular order:

1) Something I've been banging on about for years: not everything that concerns the polis is political. This is true in at least two ways: a) the most important parts of our social existence (the family, the little platoons of civil society, the interiority of the self) are only the concern of politics to the extent that politics needs constantly to be reminded that the State needs to leave space for them; b) for everyday politics to thrive, it needs to rest on a level of reflection about human life that sits between the abstractions of much academic debate and the daily grind of party political life. Neither of these truths is clearly or regularly acknowledged in current Scottish political life. Both are (or at least have been) better dealt with in American thinkers such as Russell Kirk.

2) The exclusive concentration on a UK perspective among most Scottish conservatives while understandable (if you think the question of the Union is key, then the battle is going to be dominated by this issue for the next few years at least) is destructive. Unless that deeper level of conservative thought about 'the permanent things' of human life retains a place in Scottish public discussion, then more damage will be done to Scottish life in the long run than whatever happens with the Union. To put it slightly more crudely than it deserves, it is more important that someone starts talking about (say) the place of the traditional family and a humane education in modern Scotland than whether or not Scotland becomes independent. (This is particularly true if Scotland does become independent and, for a generation or more, there is no conservative presence in Scottish intellectual life because it has previously focused entirely on the Union.)

3) I think what I find most admirable about Buckley and the National Review is the way that it created a landscape for conservatism. If you think that conservatism is concerned with the value of a number key things (eg God, family, country, scepticism, little platoons etc) you would expect a kaleidoscope of prudential judgments about how these values are to be realized. (And so on the one side (well, strictly, just outside the borders) you have radical libertarians such as Rand, and on the other ur-traditionalists such as Bozell in his Carlist phase.) One of the problems with modern conservatism (especially but not just in Scotland) is the lack of internal squabbling at a sufficiently deep intellectual level. A landscape of conservatism has to be inhabited by marauding and mutually (slightly) suspicious tribes.

4) We need to do God more. Western civilization is bound up with Christian theism. There's room for the humane sceptic, the Muslim (perhaps even (in Scotland) the Catholic) within a broad understanding of that theistic focus, but to allow the centre ground to be dominated by the assumptions of a militant anti-Christian secularism is commit intellectual and social suicide.

5) A particular point for Scotland. The history of Scottish nationalism is one that had a place for conservative understandings of society. I would expect (see 3) there to be different views on the place of the Union/Independence among modern Scottish conservatives. That (certainly in UKIP and the Conservative Party) there appears to be unanimity in favour of the Union is a sign of intellectual weakness and lack of depth. (It didn't surprise me -although it seems to have surprised many others- that the deepest conservative in the UK at the moment, Roger Scruton, came out broadly in favour of Scottish independence.) Given a conservative focus on the local and the place of tradition, it would be odd if some conservatives were not nationalists. Equally, given the conservative emphasis on stability and scepticism about the State's ability to improve human life, it would be odd if some were not.

6) A particular point for Catholics. There is a temptation, especially given the fideistic turn of much twentieth century Catholic theology, to turn from politics and questions of society towards pietism. Whilst it is important for us to remember the limitations of the earthly life, equally, a simplistic focus on our supernatural end is not in keeping with Catholic teaching. (Think St Joan of Arc. Think of the social teaching of Leo XIII.) At the moment, the neuralgic issues of Catholic teaching (sex and the family) are neuralgic precisely because they are out of step with modern, secular beliefs, and the 'push' to change Catholic theology and for individuals to fall away from the Church comes from this. While there is clearly a place for a simply reassertion of authority ('This is straightforwardly what the Church teaches...') there is also a place for defending a broadly conservative view of society on the grounds of human nature (or natural law if you prefer). If socially conservative views establish a hearing in the marketplace of political ideas, this will reduce the tension felt by individuals between what is socially acceptable and what the Church teaches. (There will always be a faithful, saintly remnant who keep the teachings, no matter what. But I see absolutely no reason why we also shouldn't strive to create the most favourable social circumstances for a 'just about solid enough' crowd to accompany them.)

7) I'm not mad about the label 'conservative'. It suggests a link with the Conservative Party which is (almost) entirely imaginary. (I see very little sign of conservatism as I mean it in the modern Scottish or UK party.) There is absolutely no reason why the key elements of conservatism (let's try God, family, country, little platoons, scepticism, tradition) shouldn't be present in most of the modern Scottish political parties. Indeed, it is essential if 'conservatism' is to function as a major part of the political debate, that it is wider than local party loyalties -that it becomes a landscape (see 3) in the same way that 'progessivism' seems to dominate current parties. So find another label if you can ('social' conservatism is the best I can do). It's the substance that matters.

8) And finally. I think  my previous cry for a Scottish William Buckley Jnr was one of those lines that creates misunderstanding as much as it helps by being striking. I don't think we should (or indeed could) import some aspects of American cultural war conservatism into Scotland. (You can take your pick on what these rejected elements might be, but I suspect that they might include aspects on race and projecting national interests through force. Perhaps, in general, we need to drop that sense of war in culture wars?) But this is a deep political struggle about culture: how people see their lives and flourishing as social beings. By all means take some of the intransigence and heat out of the debate if you can. But the fact remains that Scottish discussion about how to live in societies is dominated by a very narrow (and wrong) set of 'progessive' assumptions. It is for that cultural struggle that we need a McBuckley (and Kirks, Bozells, Burnhams etc etc): popularizers who remain in touch with deeper issues and are willing to create a genuine, socially conservative landscape of debate as alternative to the monotonous progressive dogma of what passes for public intellectual life in modern Scotland.

Social conservatism and defending the nation

I've been immersed in reading about the trials and tribulations of twentieth century American conservatism recently (William Buckley Jnr, L.Brent Bozell, Russell Kirk etc). Mere curiosity aside, such a focus can, I think be defended on two grounds. First, there is something broader about the American conservative landscape that has allowed a greater variety and depth of views to be developed and defended, certainly when compared to the UK, let alone Scotland. Secondly, as a result of globalization etc, the American political landscape is, especially for Anglophones, our political landscape. (As an added bonus for Catholics, many of the major figures were Catholic.)

George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 spends much of its time (in broad terms) considering the split between traditionalists and neo-cons (although he doesn't use those terms). A particularly dramatic moment which to an extent symbolizes the theoretical differences here is Willmoore Kendall's claim that a society has to be both closed to certain ideas and willing to defend itself against them by determined action:

Kendall acknowledged that 'liquidation [in this context, the deportation of Communists] of a minority' must be a very careful undertaking. But he insisted on two principles:

   ...a) that a democratic society that has a meaning to preserve, as I think that ours still does, must stand prepared to make such decisions, and b) that the surest way for it to lose its meaning is for it to tell itself, and its potential dissidents, that where dissidence is concerned, the sky's the limit.

(from The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945)

Putting aside the rather chilling 'liquidation', the fundamental point that all societies are closed to certain values is undoubtedly true. (To what extent that exclusion is permanent and how it is to be enacted are further matters.) But what (for the UK) is the content of those defended values? And so we are back again to the question of British values and how they are to be realized particularly in the school system.

Sticking to a broadly Conservative party and similar (eg UKIP) position, we seem to be stuck in traditionalist/Kendallian majoritarian space. Kendall 'rejected as inherently undemocratic any effort to limit majorities by bills of rights' (ibid). In rough terms, whatever current British culture holds to be right are British values. And so we are delivered a rather unstable soup of defending the British Empire, supporting the post-Reformation settlement, the Monarchy, Unionism and welcoming the post 1960s sexual experiment. To articulate it is at once to risk revealing its inconsistency and even incoherence.

On the other hand, from a broadly neo-conservative position, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that what tradition has delivered to us in British politics is any good, and certainly, not entirely good. British history, the state we're in, like all other human endeavours, is shot through with human failings and the evils therefrom. What is right in the tradition (and a certain inherent scepticism should make any brand of conservative careful about rejecting too quickly what we have received) has to be tested, for example, by the principles of natural law and right. And we won't be suprised to find, at times, that this will show the tradition to be wanting.

And what then of the Catholic Scottish conservative? Firstly, for any Catholic in the West, I think conservative in broad terms has to be the right label. For roughly 1500 years, the culture has been at least in intention Christian. Even though much evil has been done under that description, the system of culture aimed at there is one that has to be conserved against a culture that is often avowedly anti-Christian. But it is a set of principles, a culture, which to an extent always exists on the intellectual and moral horizon: we have failed -and will fail- to live up to it. Secondly, for a British and certainly Scottish Catholic, the tradition we live in is avowedly not entirely ours. For 500 years, we have lived in State(s) that have been mostly anti-Catholic: whatever we might share with Protestantism, we have absolutely no reason to think that there is an unproblematic set of  traditional British values that, despite a conscious opposition to Catholicism, have oddly remained still entirely Catholic. Whether or not traditionalism in politics is ever a viable Catholic political position, it is certainly not one in Britain. To bring it back to Kendall, the natural position of a Catholic conservative in the UK is one where majoritarian rule is tempered by principle.

Although I've focused in on the Catholic social conservative, I think most social conservatives would find echoes here. The Islamic conservative would find an even greater distortion of an initial revealed set of principles. Most Christians would find the last 50 years or so at least a drift from their principles. And the 'non-aligned' social conservative is left perhaps with a dream of Bognor in the 1950s, but the reality of the holders of political power cavorting with dead porkers.

Where's all this going? I think towards an awareness of quite how barren a political landscape the social conservative of that ilk faces. Political traditionalism in the UK is saddled with 500 years of Protestantism and 50 years of Vile Bodies. Neo-conservatism faces the problem of the absence of a basket of principles that is likely to command sufficient loyalty for effective political action. If there is any hope, then (as in post war America) there has to be an intellectual revival of conservatism first, which then establishes the ground for an eventual political revival. And (to return to Scotland for the moment) I see little sign of that, certainly in the supporters of the Conservative party. There we see the adoption of a political allegiance to progessivism or to the principles of the unrestrained free market. The main policy on which they agree is Unionism which, as I've argued, can hardly be regarded as essential to a principled neo-conservative case. No one is arguing the case for government (and indeed commerce) limited for the purpose of allowing the natural unit of the family and the little platoons of civil society to flourish.

This is, of course, the natural feeding ground of Red Toryism or Blue Labour. But both have limited traction in Scotland, their very names being here rather political insults. (And given current political realities, we really need a sort of Blue/Red (purple?) Nationalism.) I think we probably need a Scottish William Buckley Jnr and a National Review, an intellectual force that is genuinely intellectual but immersed in political realities and punchily dynamic. Any volunteers?

Reflections on New Year

 
                         Dante enters the Pit of Disease where falsifiers are tormented.

I suppose any Scottish blogger's reflections on 2014 and 2015 are likely to be dominated by thoughts about the referendum and the future of the Independence movement in Scotland although I'd quite like them not to be. But there you are: I lack the imagination to find something else...

I like my politics grim and detailed. I remember as a child watching fascinated as the live relay of the TUC conference rambled on with a liturgical language of 'brothers and sisters' (or 'comrades' for variation) structured wave after wave of composite this or composite that. I watched it day after day. I'm surprised my parents didn't take me to a psychiatrist. So the loose, carnivality of modern progressive Nationalism leaves me cold. I wanted to know as much as possible about the price of oil and the likely effects on the economy. I wanted -good Aristotelian that I am- to be afraid of the things the practically wise man is afraid of, and blasé about those he is blasé about. I don't care much about intersectionality, except insofar as it pertains to Lego.

But equally, the sheer disbelief of many unionist commentators that anyone (anyone) might not want to be part of the existing structure of the UK also left me cold. It's not surprising that a northern European nation of 5 millions might have a nationalist movement, rather more surprising if it didn't. It's not surprising that, at the end of a century in which the British imperium has been thoroughly critiqued, not least by the British governing class itself, that some might feel rather doubtful about a State soused in such symbols. It's not surprising that Western Europeans are hacked off with the current position and just want something different.

So we go into the New Year pretending. The 45 pretend that only the mentally ill and Quislings voted No. The attack dogs of Unionism pretend that Yes voters are all methadone crazed Neds. And beneath this obvious crust, further more local pretences. That marriage doesn't matter. (Except when changing its nature as some sort of Situationist prank.) That women and men are the same. That the second rate is the first rate and that Scottish media and artists are the latter. That education in Scotland gets better and better. That power dynamics and considerations of cost in the NHS will miraculously disappear when the State provides 'mercy' killing. And so on.

I think many sense this lie we live, the triumph of the Sophists and face. Truth in human affairs, perhaps above all in politics, is extremely difficult to attain, even to want to go on trying to attain:

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from ihemselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. [Vaclav Havel: the Power of the Powerless here]

Havel's phrase the human order and the order of the universe has of course lost all meaning for us progressives, with its tones of essentialism and natural law. But it is only that, the sense that beneath the noise and the half truths and the jockeying for advantage, that there is an order to be discerned and followed in human affairs that will save us, as a society and as individuals.

Happy New Year!

Is the Catholic Church in Scotland too Nationalist?

The above is a map of how (based on recent opinion polls) Scottish constituencies are projected to vote in the next Westminster election. (To spell it out, bright yellow is the SNP.) I couldn't help thinking about the map when reading Damian Thompson's Spectator piece entitled Memo to the Scottish Catholic bishops: stop sucking up to the SNP. (Here.)

I rather like Thompson's journalism. Like most journalists in this post modern age, he is paid to bring a bit of personality into the debate which inevitably produces both fizz and splutter over the years. But on the whole, and certainly if you're a certain sort of fogeyish, socially conservative Catholic, you're probably going to find more fizz than splutter in his work. However, on Scotland, Thompson, like most of the big beasts of Catholic opinion formation, strikes me as generally just hopelessly wrong. I think I've mentioned this before, but one of the (sadder? more amusing? depended on what mood I was in...) aspects of the referendum campaign was reading the constant stream of sneering about the Yes side in the referendum from Catholic opinion makers who really should have known better.

In one way, there's really no surprise, I suppose. The sort of people who tend to dominate the Catholic commentariate (at least the ones I read) are from (let's say) a rather conservative, traditionalist background. Put that together with a Golden Triangle (Oxford-Cambridge-London) background, and it's extremely difficult to sympathise with whingeing jocks voting for a bunch of popularist leftists. On the other hand, both localism and nationalism are popular themes among this set (in many ways, my set), and certainly that discontent with the political process represented by UKIP has received a favourable hearing. So from that point of view, I am a bit surprised at the lack of sympathy for or at least understanding of an independence movement that in many ways is just another example of a popular response to well known problems in modern Western Europe.

There's probably no one answer as to why the modern West and particularly its political process is in trouble. In part, it's probably the tension inherent in a system that is built on two  incompatible narratives: on the one hand, equality and subjectivism; on the other hand, a cult of meritocracy and technical expertise. And if you add to that the end of the economic good times, a culture prizing licence and leisure over self discipline and work, and the deliberate alienation of people from their human nature in favour of technological fantasies of self-creation and infinite possibility, you have in essence the creation of a free floating neurosis, a feeling that the times are out of joint, and the desperate seeking for release through something.

And so the parade of lightning rods, some more convincing than others: UKIP, Russell Brand, Le Front National etc etc. And, I suppose, among them, the SNP. So, to that extent, I agree with these commentators who seem to regard the movement for Scottish Independence as some sort of mental illness, to be treated rather than encountered as a natural part of the political landscape. Except....

And the 'except' is that the SNP are viable in a way that Russell Brand and even UKIP just are not. As the above map shows, it is likely that, after the next general election, the SNP will dominate Scottish seats in Westminster in a similar way to their domination of Holyrood. Moreover, Scots have got used to competent Holyrood administrations run by the SNP: if Salmond is some sort of wild eyed Braveheart fantasist, he is a wild eyed Braveheart fantasist who can run the country and win elections. (And no one has suggested that Nicola Sturgeon -like her or loathe her- is anything if not effective.)

I'm not sure when it happened, but some time since the re-foundation of the Scottish Parliament, my default setting for political interest has drifted from Westminster to Edinburgh. I don't regard either Salmond or Cameron as exactly 'my leader', but the political drama I look to first is that around Holyrood: indeed, it has started to become almost something of an afterthought to wonder what is happening at Westminster. I think it is that which is the biggest challenge to the Union: not so much the transfer of this or that power or even the precise result of this or that vote, but more the reframing of the electorate's interest in Scotland around Edinburgh rather than London. Now make of that what you will. It may be a fault to be regretted, a passing phase to be reversed. But I suspect -I'd in fact put it much more strongly than that- that I'm far from being alone in such a revisioning of the political settlement: in the minds of many Scots, Scotland is already a separate political landscape from that of Westminster and the rest of the UK.

And that is the context within which Archbishop Tartaglia's remarks should be taken. First, I'm not at all sure that, even in themselves they are that dreadful: Salmond has been a major figure in Scottish politics and his (sort of) passing deserves some sort of kind remark. (And Tartaglia's remarks on Sturgeon strike me as anodyne in the extreme.) Secondly, Tartaglia is but one bishop: you'd be hard put to find similar remarks from the much more careful Archbishop Cushley, let alone, say, Bishop Gilbert of Aberdeen. (And is it really a surprise that, within any Bishops' Conference, some will be closer to any particular party than others?) But thirdly, and most importantly, it is entirely reasonable that any bishop tries to find some modus vivendi with the government and leading political figures of the day. Inevitably, that balance is hard to get right: what is 'fawning' to some will appear merely formal politeness to others. That is what Thompson is missing: that Tartaglia is not sucking up to some relatively isolated charismatic popularist like Nigel Farage, but what has become almost the establishment in Scotland. (Would a similar jeremiad have been provoked if, say, a Catholic Bishop had spoken warmly of David Cameron after he resigned?)

I don't think the domination of Scotland by one party is healthy. I very much hope that Jim Murphy will restore the Labour Party to an effective opposition and a potential government. I also hope (though I see absolutely no realistic sign of this) that the Scottish Conservatives start providing a genuinely conservative alternative to a rampant progressivism, rather than trying to outdo the other parties in their endorsement of modish nonsense. But until all that happens, get used to the Catholic Church (and indeed other institutions such as universities and business) choosing their words carefully in the light of the reality of a Scotland where the SNP is the natural party of government. Scotland already is a separate and different political landscape, and until London commentators, Catholic or otherwise, get that, their pronouncements will continue to miss the mark.

Still going on about that Referendum...

               Enthusiasm 'rises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening brain' 


Still, I suppose, thinking predominantly about the aftermath of the Referendum. There are perhaps three blogposts lurking here which, in an attempt to smother any lingering spirit of separatism, shall henceforth be enfolded in a Most Glorious Union...

With the massive increase in the membership of the SNP, Scottish Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party, the nightmare scenario of the lunatics taking over the asylum may well have arrived. As I blogged before, one of the worries about Independence was that it would deliver Scotland over to a bunch of progressive loons. On the other hand, one of the strongest arguments in favour of Independence was the responsibility of self-government would force a more mature political culture to develop as reality began slapping Holyrood in the face like an old kipper.

Welcome to Nightmare Plus: none of the reality checks of Independence together with the complete absence of any conservative restraint on Scottish politics as the SNP (with a new leader more inclined to progressivism) looks over its shoulder at an opposition consisting of Patrick Harvie and worse.

Part of this brave new  world will of course be the new found mass membership of the SNP and other progressive parties. This leads me on to the question of the much vaunted success of the Referendum in boosting interest in politics. Now, before I go all grinch on you, I suppose I'd better concede that the 80% plus voting rate in the Referendum was a good thing: a gradually increasing non-participation in elections is a bad thing, and I'm pleased this trend has been reversed (at least in this special case). But whilst good in itself, such participation is a paltry thing in the big picture. Unlike many other commentators, I've never met someone who isn't interested in politics: they're interested in whether they have work, how their children are educated, whether the roads are repaired etc etc. What they're very often not interested in (or perhaps more accurately, not interested in participating in) are the practices of modern party politics: either voting, or (still less) the slog of active membership in a constituency party. Such an attitude is entirely understandable. Voting has an extremely limited effect on how most people's lives are run: unlike the very clear cut choice in the Referendum, the choice between one soggy progressive party run by PPE graduates and another soggy progressive party run by other PPE graduates is not epoch making. (And then factor in how much influence one vote has.) Even if you think the decision not to vote regrettable (and I do), it is understandable. Even  more understandable is the decision not to get involved in party politics. My own (very limited) experience of this suggests it requires both a high tolerance for odd personality types, saintlike patience, a complete indifference to domestic comfort etc. Again, I think that non-participation is regrettable, but in this case, it is entirely rational for most normal people: most people will not (cannot) be party activists.

So how can this enthusiasm for 'politics' be sustained? I think the simple answer is it can't and it shouldn't be imagined that it can. The heart of life isn't in the machinery of democracy: it's in the home, in art, in work and in religion. One (the key?) problem of democracy is that participation in it is necessary to the preservation of what we value, yet, to serve that preservative function, it has to become too dull to encourage participation. There may be little, ameliorative solutions to all that, but no silver bullet. (Well, unless you bring back religion into the sphere of government... That's a) true and b) there to wind up the Scottish Secular Society.)

Which, tertio, brings me on to the old. The current urban legend is that it's-the-old-wot-lost-it. Kevin McKenna (in an excellent piece) summarized the view:


The yes campaign maintained a sense of verve, excitement and drama that was largely supplied by young Scots who had previously been left unimpressed by the normal methods of party politics.

Sure, all the old footsoldiers of nationalism did their bit, visiting houses, handing out leaflets, but there was a fresh sense of unbounded optimism; of we-can-achieve-anything, and it was this that drove them to the outskirts of victory. By contrast, more than 70% of Scotland's pensioners voted no, fearful for their pensions and their end-of-life care.

Despite the fact that the figures don't really bear this narrative up, it is true that the strongest vote against Independence in any age group was that of the over 65s. I'm not sure what we're supposed to conclude from this: that the old, having a greater sense of corporeal frailty and the vicissitudes of life than testosterone fuelled young men with immature frontal lobes are clearly wrong? That because they are the other to us (about thirty-five, white male, full head of hair) that their sensibilities are somehow aberrant? There are all sorts of alternative, non-debunking explanations for the suspicions of the old other than the claim that they were simply too moronic or weighed down by a culture of deference to vote properly. (I thought it particularly unfair of Lallands Peat Worrier to complain about the unwillingness of a group of old ladies to give the time of day to a charivari of Yessers. Dodging crowds full of their own self importance is Urban Living 101, whether this is a matter of chuggers, Mormons or double glazing salesmen. And it's often accompanied by the emotional uneasiness and self-justification resulting from the habits of politeness being overridden by the need to avoid spending 25 hours a day explaining that you really don't want a new boiler or indeed, fundamental constitutional change, thank you.)

Anyway, surely the most important task in hand is the choice of a new National Anthem for Progressive North Britain. Judging from the progressive antipathy towards coffin dodgers, might I suggest Bloodhound Gang's I Hope You Die? (It's the Bloodhound Gang, so don't watch it if you mind rude.)