11/09/2008

The final report of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission - published on Monday - is lucid, intelligent and optimistic and it makes a convincing case for a Scottish digital TV channel.

In two respects, the report  does not go far enough. It recommends that broadcasting, for the time being a least, should still be a subject , 'reserved' to the Westminster Parliament. It mentions the new Gaelic television channel, BBC Alba, but says nothing at all about the even more acute problem of the Scots language.

The Scotland Act, made the Scottish Parliament responsible for cultural policy in Scotland. But, at the same time, Westminster kept broadcasting - by far the most influential means of cultural expression - firmly under its own control.

The Labour Government introduced Devolution in the hope, in George Robertson’s words, that it would kill Scottish aspirations for independence, “stone dead”. It was unwilling to risk a Scottish broadcasting service which might increase Scottish self-confidence and encourage aspirations towards independence.

The report says that its recommendation that broadcasting should not at present be devolved “does not mean that this option should be wholly discounted” (para 6.8). In the next paragraphs, it recommends that the Scottish Parliament “takes an active role in considering the broadcasting industry” and that functions in this matter which are at present exercised by Westminster should move to Scottish ministers. The trouble with this idea, of course, is that Westminster will, almost certainly, rule it out on the grounds that broadcasting is reserved.

Then there is the urgent problem of the decline in the use of the Scots language. This is an important issue because Scots is a rich and expressive tongue which evolved over centuries in response to Scottish experiences and feelings. It has been one of the pleasures of living in Scotland and it is the language of much of our best literature.

The historian, Geoffrey Barrow, famously said that the failure of Scotland to create its own organisation for public services broadcasting was the greatest cultural disaster which Scotland suffered in the 20th century. A London controlled broadcasting service naturally gave preference to the great majority of its audience south of the Tweed.

This destroyed the self-confidence of many Scots, by giving them the impression that they lived in an unimportant backwater which had never achieved anything of importance. It also meant that English voices, and hardly ever a word of Scots, penetrated into virtually every house in Scotland.

The consequence of this has been that the use of Scots has declined so far that many people living in Scotland have hardly ever heard a word of it and others have been encouraged to regard it as a vulgar form of speech, unacceptable in polite society. This, of the language of Dunbar, Henryson, Fergusson, Burns, Sydney Goodsir Smith and Garioch, and of the dialogue in the novels of Walter Scott, Galt and Stevenson.
   
Gaelic is, of course, also under threat, but it has not declined so rapidly and so dramatically as Scots. Both have rich literatures, but the one in Scots is even more extensive than the one in Gaelic.

Paradoxically, for some years, successive governments have provided substantial funds to support Gaelic, but very little for Scots. It has been even less than the government support of Scots in Northern Ireland.

Now, when a Gaelic TV channel is about to start, the modest amount given to the Scots Language Centre and the Scottish Language Dictionaries have been withdrawn.

This is a crisis which demands immediate action. The funding of the Language Centre and the Dictionaries should be resumed. Radio Scotland should include programmes in Scots. Could not the new Gaelic TV channel become one devoted to both of our languages?

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

Read more of Paul Henderson Scott: here.

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