Jul 27, 2014 09:24 By Dailyrecord.co.uk 9 Comments AWARD-WINNING novelist and poet McIlvanney says its time for Scotland to take a risk on September 18 and make our mark on the world as an independent nation. 593 Shares Share Tweet +1 Email Writer William McIlvanney ONE of the popular myths about contemporary Scotland is that it has a desire for a just society more radical than it has the parliamentary power to express. It is a myth I tend to share in. I’ve suggested before that a motto for modern Scotland might be – instead of the old, belligerent ‘Wha daur meddle wi’ me?” – something more gently insistent, like “Wait a minute! That’s no’ fair.” Politically, Scotland is like a living entity which has been cryogenically frozen and stored within the UK for over 300 years. Isn’t it time to come out of history’s deep-freeze and explore for ourselves who we really are? Whatever that reality turns out to be, let’s confront it. It’s time to grow up and take full responsibility for ourselves. A Yes vote would do that. Whichever way Scotland votes in this referendum, there are risks. A No vote will be a vote for political inertia, an abjuration of change. That old Scottish shibboleth “Better the de’il ye ken” will leave the future handcuffed to the past, and the key not in our possession for the foreseeable future. A Yes vote will take us into unknown territory. There will be challenging hazards ahead, the biggest of which may be the fact that we will be reaffirming our nationhood at a time when events seem to be trying to render that concept less and less relevant. In his interesting book Who Are We?, Gary Younge quotes from Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs McWorld: “By many measures corporations are more central players in global affairs than nations. “We call them multinationals but they are more accurately understood as postnational, transnational or even anti-national. For they abjure the very idea of nations or any other parochialism that limits them in time or place.” In illustration of that point, Younge cites the case of Brazil, where in 2002, a left-wing government was elected for the first time in the country’s history. Within three months, $6billion had been pulled out of the country “and some agencies had given Brazil the highest debt-risk rating in the world”. An aide to the president said: “We are in government but we are not in power.” That’s a bit of a frightener, isn’t it? But let’s not panic. Scotland is small enough to be lost in a corner of Brazil and is therefore more easily adaptable as a nation to changing circumstances. It has a political coherence Brazil can only dream of. It has a prolonged history of entrepreneurial experience. Think of the significant part it played in that long act of international rapine called the British Empire. And Scotland is already hooked up to a network of finance coming from beyond its borders. The providers of such finance could presumably adapt to an independent Scotland and still serve their own interests. And such a change should not be regarded as a retreat into parochialism but rather as a reaffirmation of an international identity, which is something the multinationals wish to ignore. What they represent is not internationalism. It is inter-non-nationalism. It is a way of forbidding people from having a significant identity beyond being a potential market. They see countries as abstractions in a financial game. The world is their Monopoly board and all the nations just the inert pieces with which they play. Why not try to use such limited powers as we have to bring one of those inert pieces alive, namely our own country, and give it a political dynamic beyond the sterile preconceptions of the multinational companies? All these reflections mean is that, come the referendum, I will take my cue from an anecdote told to my brother by a fellow sportswriter. I had the story second-hand but I’m sure I have the gist of it right. Once, when Reg Gutteridge was in Las Vegas, no doubt to cover a boxing match, he had occasion to talk to Siegfried and Roy. They were German showmen who had a dangerous act involving two tigers. To advertise the show, they would sometimes put leashes on the tigers and take them for a walk through part of Las Vegas. Asked if this didn’t invite challenges from every dog they passed, one of the men dismissed the idea. These were tigers, after all. Then he paused and said something like: “Oh, no. No. Wrong. One dog keep bark, barking at the tigers. Very small dog with square head.” Further inquiries established the dog was a Scots terrier. So, on September 18 (while being fully aware of the tigerish rapacity of the multinationals but also having a firm belief that Scotland has a lot more to offer than that small dog had), I will imitate the action not of the tiger but of the Scottie: “OK, tigers. Come ahead!” I will vote Yes.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 11:53:30 +0000
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