TABLE TALK
Stands Scotland where she did?
DENIS BROGAN
By a series of accidents that concern no one but myself, I have made only the briefest visits to my native land in the past two yearS and I had almost forgotten how snell the September days (and nights) could be. In any case, I had come north, not to swoon in the heavy languid airs that I had fondly hoped I might enjoy, but to see whether Scotland stood where, she did and how far she had thrown off the inertia, the sullen resignation, the colonial resignation, of the drear decades that I had known too well. There had been (so I was told) a national revival. If old, dreary, exhausting labouring in the pits has happily begun to disappear, new industries, improved versions of old industries, new cultural ventures, a more European and less merely British, view of Scotland's place in the world have taken the place of the in- creasingly 'aggrifying' and more and more irritating 'Here's tae us, wha's like us' at- titude of my youth. Scotland had her way to make in the world, and not merely by ad- ditions to the ppssibly excessive number of Highland Gatherings, and not even the con- tinuing success of the Edinburgh Festival could quite console for the signs of economic seizing-up, or the steady flow of Scots seek- ing the noblest prospects of London and Birmingham. I had been told that all that had changed. There was a nova erectio of the Scottish institutional framework, and the modern disciples of Fletcher of Saltoun were being confuted every day in the new Scotland that was repenting and redressing all the sins of the past.
Well, there was, I discovered, something in the optimistic picture. There was not much visible of the really dreadful economic catastrophes of the past. You didn't see the Dux of a high school or academy kicking a ball idly around because no one had hired him.There were plenty of signs of change for the better or, if not for better, of change. I was taken by one of my brothers (reluctantly on my part) into one or two reformed pubs with a nickel finish and specimens of a kind of Clydeside art nouveau that would have startled Charles Rennie Macintosh. There were imitations of Oxford Street, and one could see the grim and impressive head- quarters of 'the House of Fraser', which owns so many London department stores,
patriotically binds its accounts books in tartan, but is increasingly harassed in Glasgow herself by the absurdities—or worse—of the rating system.
The great new University of Strathclyde is one sign of progress. The great ancient university is entering well into its sixth cen- tury with more hope than it celebrated its fifth century in 1931. There are admirable pictures in large numbers in Kelvingrove. There is the perpetual promise of a gallery for the great Burrell Collection and there is the great country house of Pollok, given by the Stirling-Maxwell family, superior, I think, to Ken Wood, situate in its great policies, which I am told include an ad- mirable golf course. And the hills and moun- tains are around on three sides. Ben Lomond and Goatfell. And the 'Clyde the sacred river' still runs down to a usually sunless sea.
And yet and yet. The intelligent authors of 1066 and All That noted that the industrial revolution 'changed the faces of the North of England'. Still more did it change the faces of the South of England. Largely stocked from two of the tallest of white races, the
Scots and the Irish, the maturing generations still show too many stunted relics of the great revolution launched by James Watt and the University of Glasgow. Bow legs are less common, but stunted, if robust, frames are too common. Too many years of darkness, of what is politely called inade- quate and ill-planned diet, have taken their toll. Of course, the traditional 'hairy-legged Irishmen' of the Highland Light Infantry could be and often were very tough. A tall, fair, handsome Highland school master of mine, after the first war, told me with un- fraternal sympathy for our Yankee allies how in a pissoir in Boulogne at the end of 1918, he had seen two complacent, tall and presumably tough Yankees get into a row with a stunted HU (or possibly Cameronian) private. The Yanks were, they thought, in command of the situation. But the Scot, moving with a speed worthy of a rattlesnake, grabbed each Yank by his elaborate tunic pocket buttons, pulled their heads down, brought his own up with startling speed, cracked each Yankee jaw and left the robust Yanks in the gutter.
But it must be said that things have im- proved. There seem, judging from the public prints, to be far fewer merely mischievous examples of. wrecking trains. Yet it alarmed me, assessing the prospects of the Tory party in Scotland, to read of Mr Heath, then merely Leader of the Opposition, thinking to flatter his Glasgow audience by paying tribute to the local sport of 'soccer'. After all, no one in Broadstairs or wherever he lives, refers to yachting as `boating'.
Not all the American plants on Clydeside or the Lancashire Ferrantis in Edinburgh or even the Festival can undo the errors, the faults, the treasons, that have made Scotland stand barely where she did. Grouse, even grouse shot by royal guns, bogus Gaelic fes- tivals, no vicarious patriotism of the new versions of the Balliol lords, can give Scot- land confidence. For what the Ancient King- dom needs is a ruling class (whether it is Tory or Socialist) that has more to say to the country's needs than the easy patriotism of a Burns supper.
But enough. There are signs, hopeful and helpful signs, of a corner being turned—just. The always excessive conceit of the Scots has taken many a knock in the past generation. Maybe a more sober patriotism will earn for Scotland some of the reputation it had and earned in the eighteenth century (the greatest Scottish century).
And as I see the fair-skinned, red-haired weans (ang1ice children), so much cleaner. more robust, cheerful in the streets; when 1 see the destruction of the grim slums and the possibilities open to more intelligent town planning than Glasgow has had in the past or Edinburgh has in the present, 1 take heart of grace. A great Celtic and Rangers match has ended an hour ago and I have forgotten to ask who won. I haven't been to Edinburgh to see or hear the tattoo beneath the Castle. I haven't heard or seen a single pipe band in Glasgow and, if it is important (as Fletcher of Saltoun's thought) to save the ballads of a nation, it may be important that in this backward country the Beatles have replaced Burns. But I remember that one of the great figures of the European Enlightenment was a devoted believer in Ossian, an uncritical ad- mirer of the Pipes and, like me, was sent South by the University of Glasgow to enlighten Balliol. Our effort may have been wasted but it was made. 'Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word'—and with it Scotland.
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