SCOTS CRY FOR ARGENTINA
In Scotland's pubs, reports Neil Drysdale, England's northern neighbours cheered for their enemy's enemy Edinburgh PERHAPS IT was appropriate that a man called Batty should miss the penalty which sent England out of the World Cup on Tuesday. For those still inclined to regard Britain as any kind of United Kingdom, the craziness of the previous few hours had proved beyond reasonable doubt that Scot- land is currently afflicted by a mass epi- demic of anti-English hysteria.
In every corner of Scotia, the whoops of delight which followed Argentina's dra- matic penalty shoot-out victory testified to the malaise. The board outside the Auld House tavern in Edinburgh proclaimed simply: 'Argentina v. Them'. The streets were deserted, the drinking places packed as hundreds of thousands of Scots rejoiced in Schadenfreude. Yes, a few of the assem- bled throng might have paid heed to Lloyd Webber and Rice and weren't crying for Argentina, but they were very quiet.
The signs had been in evidence from the previous Friday, when during the match against Colombia, a deluge of boos greet- ed the sight of Scotland's latest hate figure. First, Mr Punch's chin hovered into view, then the St George's Cross bow tie served notice that we were in the company of Jimmy Hill, the television pundit.
He is the reddest of rags to true Scots everywhere and the scourge of those increasing numbers of Tartan Army recruits who willingly confess that if foot- ball ever gets round to staging a match between England and a Saddam Hussein XI, they will be firmly rooting for the Baghdad brigade. 'See yon Hill, if he was chocolate he'd eat himself,' Bellowed Rab McKinlay as he watched the BBC's build- up to England's tussle with Colombia. `Doesn't he sum up absolutely everything we hate about that bunch: pompous, con- descending, know-all . . . and these. are just his good points.'
The people around him in the central Edinburgh local nodded their heads in vig- orous agreement. 'Jimmy Hill, you're a poof, you're a f—ing poof,' a few others nearby shouted in discordant unison. 'My head says England, but my nose says Colombia,' drawled Jack Anderson, an elderly gentleman, who despite fighting alongside Tommy Atkins in the second world war, seemed as willing as the more youthful drinkers at the bar to shout abuse at the England class of '98.
`I suppose that in my heart I don't really hate the Sassenachs, but they're hard to stomach, aren't they? Their hooligans, their pressmen, hell, even their footballers behave as if they were God's gift to sport. No doubt the majority down south don't act in the same fashion, but we never hear from them. It's always the loudmouths.'
His words emphasise the mounting anti- English feeling spreading across Scotland. A Daily Telegraph poll on Tuesday revealed that most Scots would rather any- one won the World Cup than Glenn Hod- dle's men; 34 per cent plumped for England as the team they would least like to triumph in the Coupe du Monde and asked to choose an adjective to sum up their English brethren, 'arrogant' topped the list at 16 per cent.
Certainly, the World Cup has fuelled the great divide and stoked up the 90-minute patriots. But sadly there's more to it than temporary claymore-rattling. Whether in expressing dissatisfaction with Tony Blair and predicting that the imminent devolved parliament will be nothing more than an expensive talking-shop with no real power, or castigating the antics of strident Little Englanders such as Jimmy Hill, there is a depressing negativity in the Scottish air.
In the past, these demerits largely remained beneath the surface of the pawky humour and morose fatalism for which the Scots are renowned. Every four years, we would venture to the World Cup and find new ways of avoiding success by setting ourselves low personal standards and then failing to achieve them. Yet it was just a game, not a matter of life and death, and in any case, England them- selves stumbled with sufficient regularity to permit their northern neighbours a reprieve from southern triumphalism.
Increasingly, however, Scotland's perfor- mances have proved dismal enough to shat- ter the dream that sooner or later, the team might aspire to world-class status. Even their official World Cup song in 1998, Del Amitri's self-deprecating ballad 'Don't Come Home Too Soon' tapped into a national pessimism at the predictable man- ner of their sharp exit from the tourna- ment. Throw into the mix a widespread resentment that successive London-based politicians have (allegedly) usurped Scot- land's national resources, and you have a recipe for disenchantment which was vocif- erously exposed in the midst of England's struggle with their Argentine opponents.
`Mrs Thatcher gave us the poll tax and now Mr Blair's sent us up a stack of urani- um to Dounreay,' said Bob Magill as he watched 18-year-old Michael Owen push the English 2-1 in front with a sublime goal that raised nary a cheep of approbation. 'Is it any wonder that we are fed up with Westminster and London dictating our lives and telling us that we should be happy because we have devolution? Why? It won't solve a damned thing except feather the nests of a lot of dodgy pen-pushers and party hacks. Labour knows that. So do the Tories and that's why the two of them are in cahoots.'
Naturally, the SNP does not wish to be seen as fermenting racial hatred, but the party's current high rating in the polls (42- 48 per cent) owes not a little to gaining converts from both Old Labour and disillu- sioned Conservatives. 'We know there are minority positions we have to try to get rid of, but the way to do that is by removing historical inequality and moving towards equality and independence,' says the SNP's chief executive, Mike Russell. 'Ultimately, I don't believe anti-Englishness is an impor- tant factor in Scottish politics.'
He may be right, but the howls of rejoic- ing over David Batty's despair hinted at a less alluring truth. That far too many Scots have lost the ability to post their own mile- stones and have turned into a curmudgeon- ly bunch of whingers, deriving succour from watching their fellow Britons fare as badly as themselves. In which light, devolu- tion promises a further souring of relations as the reality hits home that the Edinburgh parliament will inevitably prove a triumph of jaw-jaw over substance, a twilight zone of moaning inconsequence.
`At least with the England-Argentina game on ITV, we were spared Jimmy Hill,' growled Peter Kelly. A sorry lament from the bowels of the country which used to churn out explorers, inventors, doctors and military commanders the way we now revel in a conveyor belt of mediocre footballers and politicians.
The author is a feature writer for Scotland on Sunday.
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