It's history, man

I watched two TV programmes tonight: one was about the murder in Glasgow of three policemen by an ex-policeman. It appeared on Alba and was half in Gaelic and half in English. The other was a wee gem in the STV series The People's History Show, all about Scotland's relationship with slavery and the emancipation of slaves.

Let's talk about the Alba programme: in December 1969, a former police officer was responsible for the death by shooting of two serving policemen and possibly of a thief who had been working with him and is thought to be buried in the foundations of the Kingston Bridge. No one has ever been able to explain why he did it. I was 21 in 1969. I'd just come back from living in France for a year. I remember nothing about this story. The man responsible, Howard Wilson, may still be alive. I can't tell you: there's nothing on the internet about his life after he was released from prison in 2002.

It really bugs me that I have to go to Alba for this kind of information, especially since Alba is already where I go to get information about what's happening in the wider Europe, through the Eorpa series.

In the STV documentary, there was a suggestion that Scotland's relationship with slavery has been kept from us. I was astonished at this. A wee bit of investigation will tell you, it's not just slavery, guys: Scottish history has been kept from Scottish people for a couple of centuries now. We know about David Livingstone, Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, Mary Queen o Scots, Alexander Fleming and John Boyd Orr but as for the history of the poor, of women, of the Gaels and the Irish and others who settled here, not so much.

But ask us about British heroes - and heroines - and we can rhyme them off: Wellington, Nelson, Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell, etc. We know who Shakespeare was but have never heard of Sir David Lindsay, who was close to being Scotland's Shakespeare. We admire the great English writers of the 18th century like Pope and Dryden but we know less about the Scottish Enlightenment than our French and American compatriots, who gladly acknowledge its importance to their revolutions. We've also managed to ignore most 20th and 21st century Scottish poets while promoting the works of poets from other countries of the UK. So Iain Crichton Smith, Kathleen Jamie and Norman MacCaig are never mentioned. But you know who Philip Larkin is, right?

And our history is all in wee bits, isn't it? We know the Vikings made their mark on a lot of Scotland but have we any idea what the repercussions were for Scottish people, which are still being felt today in terms of identity? We learned about Bonnie Prince Charlie but no one ever joined the dots to show us where his movement fitted in to the geopolitical map of Europe, let alone the world.

The scary thing for me is that I am old: I know quite a lot of our history and I worry that when my generation snuffs it there may not be anyone to take the flame and run with it. And that's how it feels: Scots are on a great quest. I don't want to ignore or wipe out British history but I do want to be sure our children and grandchildren can be educated in what it is to be Scottish. Better than my generation was.

The saying is true, I'm afraid: if you don't know where you came from, you can't know where you're going.