27/07/2008

The cultural richness of Europe depends on its diversity and of this both Scotland and England are important elements. Both have evolved over many centuries diverse and rich cultures which are distinct from the rest of Europe and from each other.

The Union of 1707, which destroyed the political independence of Scotland, was a threat to the survival of Scottish distinctiveness: but, for many years, this was more potential than real.

Scotland preserved its own church, legal system, education and local government. These had much more influence on Scottish opinions and attitudes than a distant Government in London.

During the 19th century, England intervened in Scotland to suppress Jacobitism and the Highland clans and, disastrously, to introduce lay patronage in the church. Otherwise, as Walter Scott said in his Malachi Letters, Scotland “was left under the guardianship of her own institutions to win her silent way to national wealth and consequence”.

This changed in the early 19th century when England began to show a desire (to quote Scott again, and this was the reason for his passionate protest in Malachi) “for extending the benefits of their system, in all its strengths and weaknesses, to a country which has hitherto been flourishing and contented under its own”.

Even so, these interventions had at first little effect on cultural matters. It is true, of course, that London as the base of the royal court, of fashion, wealth and politics, was a powerful draw to the ambitious. On the other hand, it could be said, because of the Scottish Enlightenment and the extraordinary response to the Waverley novels in England and over the whole of Europe and North America, that Scotland had more cultural influence on England that the other way round

There was a drastic change with the introduction of broadcasting, starting with radio in 1922.

Especially with the subsequent invention of television, this became by far the most powerful means of cultural expression and influence and it was almost entirely controlled by London. Consequently the great majority of radio and television programmes have given the impression that English institutions, attitudes and ideas are universal, in this island at least. Literary adaptations are almost all English and so is history.

Broadcasting has therefore given many Scots the impression that Scotland has no history, no culture and no achievement of any kind worth speaking about. Many Scottish schools in the recent past have been nearly as bad, but broadcasting as a life-long influence is probably even more destructive. All of this has misled Scots about their own country and has drastically undermined self-confidence.
   
Broadcasting almost exclusively in English, apart from the Gaelic programmes, has brought English voices into virtually every house in Scotland. This is almost certainly largely responsible for the marked decline in recent years in the use of the Scots language.

This is a serious loss. Scots is a rich and expressive tongue and the vehicle of much of our best poetry and many of our best plays. It used to be one of the pleasures of living in Scotland and in some places it still is. There must be a vigorous campaign to arrest its decline, as there already is for Gaelic. Broadcasting should play an important part.             

There is another point on which many people have commentated. There has been a marked and depressing decline in the level of intelligence and seriousness in programmes from London and an increase in the trivial and facetious. Even those on serious subjects tend to be presented frivolously.

Scotland has long had a reputation for attaching importance to education and intellectual application and effort - the democratic intellect, in George Davie’s phrase. This, as many American historians and others have noted, is the root of the great contribution in ideas and discoveries which Scotland has made to the world.

I do not think that there can be much doubt that there would be a good audience in Scotland for programmes which aspire to a more ambitious level of intellectual effort than is available from London.

Of course, there are good Scottish programmes from time to time from the BBC and other broadcasters; but they have been a small proportion of the total output. There is an urgent need for broadcasting to cease to be a matter ‘reserved’ to the Westminster Parliament and for the creation in Scotland of our own public service broadcaster.

Of course, as for so many other desirable objectives, we shall probably have to wait for independence. Fortunately, that is no longer a distant prospect.               

Paul Henderson Scott, writer, historian, and literary critic.


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