The Phantom Thistle Thief of Shetland strikes again! Vikings, bagpipes, separatists and someone with a tin of paint

This is an expanded version of my ‘Spaekalation’ column in this week’s Shetland Times

First of all, it’s no’ me. For years now, someone in Shetland - and everyone but the constabulary seems to know who - has, under cover of deepest darkness, been erasing the thistles on those Visit Scotland tourist destination signs. He (or she) has struck again, recently,in the North Mainland. I’ve never quite understood how Europe’s biggest oil terminal, Sullom Voe, is a tourist attraction, but there are otters in the vicinity, attracted by the smell of burning gas and, obviously, the money. Those otters just love that hydrocarbon cash.

All this erasure of Scottish iconography led me to ponder, not for the first time,  the differences between  Shetland and Scotland, and also Scotland and England. Always bearing in mind, for the sake of openness and transparency, my basic position, which is that of Albert Einstein, a little known and now almost forgotten thinker of the 20th Century:

“Nationalism,” he said, “is an infantile disease. It is the measles of the mind.”

So, those English.  Things are different down there. Here’s some legal  precedents for you: 

Should a lost Caledonian be discovered wandering within York’s ancient walls, carrying, as is so often the case, a bow and arrow, he or she can be shot with impunity, except on Sundays.  

Alistair Campbell, erstwhile spin doctor and eminent bagpiper, should be cautious regarding any impromptu pibroch performances. In 1746, a James Reid claimed his piping was merely music. A court ruled he was utilising ‘an instrument of war and insurrection’. He was duly hanged.

Then there’s  Carlisle. According to the 440-year old Dormont Book, any Scot ‘found wandering’ in the city can be whipped and thrown in jail. Mind you, any local resident can be fined, whipped and banished for throwing dead animals down city wells or leaving piles of excrement outside their house for more than eight days. Perennial social problems.

And perhaps significant ones, illustrating just how different the folk of Carlisle, imbibing of an evening in Botchergate and commuting along English Street, are from their neighbours 10 miles to the north. Cross that border, and everything changes. Because, say the separatists, the Scots are so different from the English. In Scotland, people are nicer, more community-orientated, more committed to social justice, and what’s more, most of them have never voted for a Conservative government. Something which is factually untrue. A majority of Scots (and ‘Scotland residents’, as the classic Shetland usage has it) did not vote for the current Westminster coalition. A majority of Scots did vote for the previous Labour administration, though. It’s how democracy works.

 Shetland, of course, feels different from England and Scotland. The Norse ancestry of many in the Northern Isles is a  matter of genetically proven fact. Much is made of the proximity of the Bergen railway station, and the first image that many have of Shetland and Shetlanders is a man in a viking helmet, standing with a raised axe against the background of a burning galley. We don’t do thistles. Except on those Visit Scotland notices.

The thistle is of course not an historical symbol of all Scotland, but only - and apocryphally, it should be said - of one chunk. That would be the bit that defeated the Norse at the Battle of Largs in 1263. It’s an anti-Scandinavian sign. Allegedly, the Scots forces were alerted to a party of Viking land raiders by the agonised yells when one barefoot Norseman stood on a thistle.  Or perhaps two thistles. Or, for the sake of argument, let’s say three. So much for Scandic solidarity. If it hadn’t been for those three  thistles, things would be so different. And I would’t be lisping like this…

Anyway. That Gretna border seems very far away from the recently vandalised signs pointing oil-tanker-spotting tourists  towards the Sullom Voe Oil and Gas Terminal, so central to the UK’s offshore hydrocarbon future. 

Of course we in Shetland are Very Far Away, in one sense. From the soothernmost climes of Scotland.  So much so that we have allowed the misconceived  ‘Our Islands, Our Future’ Campaign to become our talisman. Leaving aside the uneasy alliance with Orkney and the Western Isles (The Battle of Largs handed the Hebrides to Scotland, leaving the Northern Isles in Norse possession for another 200-odd years), the sight of  local politicians lying on their backs, waiting to see which government, Westminster  or Holyrood, is going to tickle them the most, is, to say the least, tawdry. There is much talk about decentralisation and local democracy, but in the torrid referendum climate, anyone will say anything. In particular the separatist Government at Holyrood has a history of making promises it  has absolutely no intention of keeping, or indeed the ability to keep. Seeing as no-one knows what the result of post-separation elections might be.

And in any case, the central problem for Shetland is quite different. There is our geographical proximity to the North Sea and Atlantic oil and gas fields, our crucial importance for the importance of renewable energy and our population’s extra special niceness. And there is the question of the Zetland County Council Act (1974).

Leaving aside any other question of local authority that the SIC’s goatee-bearded-and-pierced leader and his archipelagic cohorts may put to the Powers that Would Be, the ZCC Act is unique to Shetland and gives us development control, and therefore income control, over not just oil developments affecting our immediate coastline, but aquaculture and all the looming possibilities of tidal energy and offshore windfarms. It exists. It is on the statute books, and it is a Westminster Act, fought for brilliantly by the late Jo Grimond, and for which we have to thank all the glory and wonder of Shetland’s welfare economy. One which it seems this council is industriously trying to dismantle.

The ZCC Act, used wisely, also offers Shetland control over the kind of seaborne renewables-based future that Scotland’s other island authorities can only dream of. In an important article for Shetland Life Magazine, Kate Johnson of Heriot Watt University argues that the ZCC Act provides a model for community coastal governance not just in Scotland, but throughout the UK. http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2013/04/05/shetland-a-model-for-the-future/

Of course, come a separate Scotland, the ZCC Act would cease to exist. I’m sure that Fergus Ewing has made soporific noises of reassurance, if The Pierced One has thought to ask him about it, but the track record, the mantra of the SNP’s Edinburghian Government is: Centralise, centralise, centralise.  There is no way on earth or sea the separatists want the ZCC Act to survive, no matter what they say now.

And they will say anything.

Despite the weasel whining from a tiny, deluded minority, Shetland will vote overwhelmingly ‘No’ in a referendum which has sucked cash, energy and commitment from the real political issues of today, and instead focussed attention on nothing more than a line in the land, many miles away from here.

Should a separate Scotland happen we could face a future where the prime motor in  a no-voting Shetland’s economic regeneration, past, present and future, the ZCC Act, has been obliterated or is left as nothing more than a quaint relic of times past, like the ability of York residents to shoot any archery-inclined Alistair Campbells.

What will we do then? Well, It’s unlikely to happen. But if, in, a nightmare triumph for knee-jerk, Braveheartian anti-Englishness, Scottish separation happens, there will doubtless be compulsory bagpipe lessons for all. Which might be a bit risky for those planning any trips south of the border.

As for Shetland’s Phantom Thistle Thief, what will she (or he) do? Lead a movement pleading for assimilation into Greater Norway (note to Norwegian military strategists: no bare feet this time)? There are those in Shetland who would seek exactly that, especially if it means we could start roasting puffins for food again. Or, we could ask for UK offshore status, a friendly occupation by the Welsh Guards, or some other non-tartanised regiment. After all, there’s that oil and gas…

I will ask the Phantom Thistle Thief next time I see him. Or her.

Nationalism: a dangerous delusion

Six months, then, until the referendum on Scottish separatism. 

Until now, I’ve said little or nothing about this in any public forum. I’ve felt uneasy about my part-time position as a broadcaster on BBC Radio Scotland, where, three late-nights a week, I’m a DJ, committed to playing new and old Scottish rock, pop and folk, set in a broader context of the best in worldwide music. Would stating my opinion alienate some of our small band of listeners? Would it call into question the much-discussed ‘objectivity of the BBC’?

But there has been, and never will be, any political discussion on Morton Through Midnight. Not on air, and not on its dedicated social media feeds or the website. This? This is personal. And too important to ignore. 

I don’t work as a journalist for the BBC.

Also, several of my colleagues in music presentation have made their opinions extremely public. So I thought I would too.

Just to be completely open: I’m a scuffling freelance hack, not on any personal contract with the BBC, paid by the independent production company which makes MTM. The rest of the time I write, books and PR, including professional social media and blogging on the energy sector for the organisation Promote Shetland. I edit the magazine Shetland Life, a monthly for the community in which I live, the Shetland Islands. The radio show is mostly broadcast from a small studio in my home there. I write about whisky and have a live musical show called The Malt and Barley Revue. 

I’m a not-uncritical member of the Labour Party. My wife is deputy chair of the local branch. I love Scotland, celebrate Scottish culture, have spent my entire life here (apart from the first year, after being born in Carlisle. That’s in England, by the way). Just as you don’t have to wear a kilt to prove you’re Scottish (in Phil Cunningham’s immortal phrase, ‘I don’t have to dress up as a Scotsman’). You don’t have to be a nationalist to be proudly Scottish. Even if you were born in Carlisle.

I think, and have always thought, that at its core nationalism, and not just Scottish nationalism, is a dangerous romantic delusion. On its own, it’s devoid of moral value. You have to harness nationalism to other concepts - oppression by a foreign state or interests, human rights - to bring a reactive morality into it. Otherwise, history teaches that nationalism is either a distraction, an entertainment, as at sporting events, or a very dangerous force that can pull communities into anger, blame, bigotry, violence, warfare and death.

In today’s United Kingdom nationalism is essentially divisive and distracting, sucking up energy and resources as the ordinary people of Britain face economic and social crisis, and the poor from Unst to Uttoxeter go hungry. A Britain presided over by a Tory government based on the ruthless pursuit of privilege, propped up by a completely and sadly discredited Liberal Democrat party. 

I believe the poor in Carlisle, Newcastle, Norwich and elsewhere deserve better than being eternally condemned to Tory rule. And that is the utterly selfish promise to the people of England made by a separate Scotland.

Nationalism generally, the SNP in particular, has used whatever political cause it can adopt, adapted to its own ends. The SNP, its present profile formed out of disillusion with the Tories and with its heartlands in former Tory strongholds, has re-invented itself as the supposed haven for the ‘centre left’ in Scotland. A separate Scotland would divest itself of Toryism, they say, reflecting the country’s essential ‘socialist identity’. And, divided from England, Scotland would be, on a Scandinavian model, a social democracy where equality, oil-funded economic growth and glorious tartan fraternity would rule. 

But nationalism, as I’ve said, is essentially value-free. It’s based on emotive concepts such as ‘the right of a nation to establish its own destiny’. Braveheart words with the bruising echo of boots on faces. Nationalism is about flags and tunes, swelling hearts and marching feet. All the rest is stolen. Ideas ripped off for the sake of achieving an end whose entire moral worth, in Scotland, seems to be based on the reactive notion that ‘We’re better than the English.’

Some on the  non-nationalist left have abandoned solidarity with their southland brothers and sisters, believing the nationalist untruth that socialism would rule in ‘New Caledonia’. They see a chance to wield power, at least on a personal level. This is, like so much else in politics, a blinkered reading of history. 

With the death of the SNP in any separate Scotland, I believe we would inevitably see the revival of Scottish Toryism . And with the promise of eternal Conservatism in England, along with the SNP’s back-of-an-envelope currency model giving essential last-word control over Scotland’s economy to the Bank of England, Scotland would still be in thrall to the Old Etonians (and their state-educated fellow-travellers) of London.

And there will be no way back.

No way back for those whose public service pensions will be - at the very least - cut, perhaps lost. No way back for those of us whose families are scattered across England. No way back for those who see their comfortable delusion of ‘socialist Scotland’ founder amid business downturn, oil uncertainty, currency upheaval and inept, self-serving, sentiment-blinded leadership. Oh, and greedy, ruthless investors from around the world keen to divide up what spoils they can tear out of the ruined remnant of a nation.

Britain is a small country. Brutal dismemberment seems horribly wrong. Invoking the strident and historically dangerous emotions of nationalism in any context save the gross exploitation and oppression of a people is foolish in the extreme. And Scotland is not oppressed and exploited by the English. It is exploited and oppressed by the forces of greed and selfishness, the forces of multinational business, the forces of gangsterism, bigotry and sectarian strife. The same basic array of evil faced throughout the UK and beyond.

So I will vote no. No to division, no to separation, no to blind, stupid or deluded, bullying and bitter emotionalism. Put simply, I want greater equality and the alleviation of poverty throughout the UK. And for greater control of our affairs in Shetland, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England.

I believe the majority of proud Scots want to remain part of the United Kingdom. We must make that plain when we vote in September. We do not want to be railroaded by a minority into the murky uncertainties and empty promises paraded by the SNP. It’s not enough to sit on the fence. It’s not enough to keep quiet.

So it’s a thoroughly Scottish ‘no’ from me. No to separatism. No to division. And an end to this monumental and corrupting distraction from the central moral and political issues we face.

(I Wish I Was) English Now - full lyrics, music and background

This song is not entirely straightforward. It's neither  nationalist nor  anti-nationalist, but it does play with the notion of being 'English' in whatever you count as 'Scotland'. I don't consider Shetland, where I live, as culturally Scottish, for example.

I was born in Carlisle. In England. Within a year of that signal event, my parents had moved back to their native Scotland, and stayed. For the duration of my schooldays, I was slagged off by classmates whenever my birthplace was mentioned. And the subject of my 'essential Englishness' was always coming up with relatives as well.

My initial defence was to take a perverse pleasure in supporting the English football team against Scotland. later, I became infected with that horrible 'anybody but England' form of Little Scotlandism, which, I fear, still resides in many Caledonian hearts. These days, I regard the sentimentalism that surrounds the tatty trappings of Tartanography -  haggis, kilt, bagpipes, a deep-seated part of nationalist politics - with suspicion. Scotland's much bigger than that.

Anyway, this is a kind of meditation on being English-born, but Scottish, if you see what I mean. It's both sarcastic and honest in its yearning, satirical and deeply felt. if that makes sense. The sung lyrics are what I could remember. The written ones are definitive:

(I Wish I Was) English Now

Soundcloud link - click here, and player will open in a new window and play song

Robert Burns was good, I agree
But he wasn't as good as Morrissey
I wish I was English now
They've got Shakespeare and that's not all
They've got people who can actually play football
I wish I was English now

The beer's better and you know it's true
They don't lace their vodka with that Irn Bru
I wish I was English now
think of the glories you will see
If you go to St Andrews University, where
Everybody's English now

CHORUS
And I may have the paternity
But I was born in Carlisle Maternity
And I'll be English for eternity
I'm English now

Cider in Devon and that's not all
There's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Everybody's Old Etonian now
The best black pudding in the world, they say,
Comes from Bury (Lancs) you don't have to go to Stornoway
Where they kill and eat the English now

CHORUS

And it's not racial purity
Some say it's insecurity
Some kind of self-induced hysteria
I'll tell you boys
It's just easier
To be English now

Bagpipes and haggis used to make me swoon
Eventually, you become immune
I only listen to the Wurzels now
But when I smell the whisky on the Speyside air, I thank God
I don't have to live there
Because I'm English now.

CHORUS

Copyright Tom Morton 2012/2014