THE PROJECTION OF SCOTLAND: HI. BROADCASTING
By GEORGE BLAKE -
SCOTLAND, like Wales, is one of the chronic problems of British broadcasting. The vast majority of its people are industrialised, and in their taste for broadcast fare differ little enough from the industrialised masses of Lancashire or the Black Country, and yet, with the national instinct for having the best of both worlds, insist on remaining defiantly Scottish. On the fringes are some 137,000 Gaelic- speakers, with their own separate culture and their own right to be entertained or instructed in their own tongue. The Region subdivides again into districts of almost unas- sailable individuality—for instance, Buchan of the iron coasts, the wind-swept farms, the craggy speech and the salty humours ; or Galloway, pastoral, pious, and comfortable. There may be to the foreigner some discernible element common to the Eyemouth fisherman, the Lanarkshire collier and the Skye _crofter, but it is certainly not strong enough to bring peace of mind to' a Director of Programmes.
It is easier, in fact, to please Greater London's eight millions through one programme than it is to satisfy the four thillioni of this inexorably individualistic and critical realm. Therein lies the practical virtue of the alternative programme system. Probably no figures are available, but one would guess that the majority of Scottish listeners devote most of their listening time to what, comes over the National wavelength. In their own Regional programme they are also getting copious offerings from across the Border. Within any average week of broadcasting time on the two programmes the contribution of the B.B.C. staff in Scotland fills a minority of hours.
On the other hand, Scottish Regional programmes are more closely packed with regional material than those of, say, Midland or West. One may say that a Scottish staff, working within the financial limitations necessarily Unposed by Broadcasting House on its boreal embassies, has wonder- fully well succeeded in expressing the spirit and in strengthening the identity of a region that claims to be a nation as well.
It is significant enough that the mere existence of a Scottish Region, with vulnerable headquarters in Edinburgh, has provided one group of the British peoples with something to heave bricks 'at; for heaving bricks is a good enough symptom of reawakened vitality. It is 'significant enough that the critics are most vehement- on what is called the "entertainment value" of the Scottish programmes, for- getting that Scotland hands its Will Fyffes and Houston Sisters and Billy Bennetts to London on a plate, as they say. In the circumstances, no Region can express itself in terms of pure entertainment. Ore leave that to frivolous London and the velleities of John Wilt.) A Region's main task is the expression of regional character and culture.
If we in Scotland launch a big ship, or open an Empire Exhibition, that is nothing. Even the English—and the Germans and Italians—are pretty good at ships and exhibi- tions'.' The Scottish OrChestra is a &tic' orchestra, but it is not better than the B.B.C. Symphony, nor than the London Philharmonic. ,The massed _resources of Glasgow and Edinburgh cannot supply such a cast of players as Mr. Gielgud can at any_ moment conjure to _Portland Place. Limitations of studios, staff, equipment and executants place the outlying stations at many technical disadvantages.
Yet even in music the Scottish transmitters have projected scmething unique. That we have a vast, rich body of folk- song is a commonplace, but until broadcasting came not even Scotland knew how vast and rich it is. Mrs. Kennedy- Fraser's somewhat wilful arrahgements of Hebridean song long ago created- a vogut for that yearning -sort of lyric; but the mere practical need to let Gaelic-speakers cater for Gaelic-speakers on the -air has liberated a great- corpr of song, gay and comic and sweet and sentimental, that had hitherto known no more than local repute or, at the best, been confided to the annual Mod of An Comunn Gaidhealach. Somebody had the excellent inspiration to broadcast Scottish dance-music regularly, and industrial Scotland (while always exercising the national talent for denigration) harked quite joyfully back to Petronella, the Dashing White Sergeant, and the Floo'ers o' Edinburgh. Pipers who had been content to charm military parade grounds and forsaken corners of High- land Games parks found themselves playing the most austere of pibroch movements to thousands at a time. The willing- ness of the " highbrow " B.B.C. to encourage experiment and research sent students to the libraries of country houses, so that delicious sessions of" Music from the Scottish Past" have been regular features of Scottish programmes for years.
Without broadcasting there must have been death in the long run for a great body of native music. Now there is, at the very least, the prospect of survival for the best. About 2,000 people may immediately listen to the Orpheus Choir singing in the Queen's Hall, but the microphone lets millions become aware of the fact that a group of Scots— from Glasgow of all places !—is rather good at choral singing, especially in national songs. Only the B.B.C. could make it possible for this generation to assess the achievement of such a composer as Hamish MacCunn, of whose compositions not one has ever been recorded for the gramophone.
The awakening of popular interest in community drama is one of the contemporary Scottish phenomena, and in this the part of the B.B.C. has been a big one. Through the accident of personnel Scottish Region has a strong bias towards the theatre ; it is lucky to possess a first-rate produzer in Gordon Gildard. "James Bridie " does not hesitate to entrust his plays to that care ; it has been the means of releasing a copious stream of native talent. Indeed, if there is ever a Scottish National Theatre, it will not be built and maintained without B.B.C. co-operation. On the whole, however, the most characteristic, successful and popular of our dramatic exports have perhaps been reconstructions of history, produced with all the resources of _studio tech- nique—pieces like The Trial of Madeleine Smith, based on the verbatim report of that sensational affair, like The March of the '45, or like H.L./., the dramatised version of a fine regimental history. In such things the native joy in the romantic—and the picturesque macabre—has. been quite brilliantly expressed.
It is this theatrical instinct which can give a broadcast of actuality from Scotland an unexpected dash of colour. For so many of our national commonplaces are theatrical in their own character—the Highland Games, festivals like the Common Ridings of the Border towns, oddities like a midnight bowling match at Thurso. This field is being cultivated more and more carefully, and the coming of the broad- casting van must lead to still more interesting discoveries. The movement had a recent climax in a series of direct broadcasts from "The Scottish Country," in which typical men and women of selected districts in the West and North told of their daily lives, their difficulties and satisfactions, in a purely documentary way (if with some charming tednical lapses), and showed, by the way, as Mr. H. E. Bates hand- somely acknowledged in these columns, how beautifully the English speech can sound on the lips of Scottish country- dwellers.
These programmes went out to England—and drew corre- spondence that ranged from fantastic praise to requests for summer accommodation and for domestic help ! They per- fectly represented, within the technical limitations, the sort of contribution to British broadcasting that only Scotland can make. But one is most amused to reflect that the B.B.C.'s examination of the national life has revealed to Scotland's own industrial population much that it never, knew before about its own country, much that it could not learn from Burns or Sir Harry Lauder, and much that only broadcasting could have taught it. The Corporation which is ,British has undoubtedly done more than any other cultural force to foster that sense of racial identity which is peculiarly Scottish.
Previous page
