It's history, man

I'm on uncertain ground writing this, but there are plenty of people out there who can keep me right if I get the facts wrong:

I left primary school in 1960. Here is what I knew about Scottish history at that point: Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off; Robert the Bruce learned from the spider; James the Sixth became James the First when the crowns were united; David Livingstone 'discovered' Africa; Robert Burns wrote poems and collected songs. That was it. I swear to you I knew more about the history of Govan, where I lived.

By the time I left secondary school, I didn't know much more about Scottish history. I realised Scotland had a different education system from England (or was it England and Wales or England and Wales and Northern Ireland?) because I sat A levels in sixth year and was told these were English exams. I don't think I even knew Scotland had a different legal system, although I'd heard of the 'not proven' verdict, dismissed in my family as: we know you did it but we can't prove it. But we're watching you, ya wee B@st@rd.

By the age of 18, however, I could tell you all about the causes of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848; the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; the Great Reform Act of 1832; Queen Victoria and the British Empire. I can also give you a pretty good list of the kings and queens of England and I know all about heroes like Nelson and Wellington.

When I went to France for the first time, in 1968, I realised pretty quickly that the French knew every step of their own history. The republic was an important part of their identity. People knew the dates and the people involved all through the existence of the state they had created. They were proud to be French but they had opinions on how their country had come to be as it was - and they didn't always like their past. They had different heroes and heroines from the Brits and were proud of them.

Me? Well, I quickly realised I knew nowt. Educated French people tried to talk to me about the great scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, mentioning David Hume and Adam Smith in the same sentence as Voltaire, one of my heroes. They talked about the role of the Scots in the American Wars of Independence, which the French supported, about John Paul Jones and about Scots who helped draft and signed the Declaration of Independence. I was, frankly, embarrassed.

It was only later that I began to look back into French history and realised that the French had created a unified state by driving many cultures in to the ground: Breton, Occitan, Alsacien, etc - and that's before we even look at the actions of the French in their 'colonies.' That's what my critical friends objected to.

From now on, what I'm going to write is my opinion about Scotland. I'm not a member of the SNP but I have strong views on identity and belonging, and if you think you might disagree, it would be better for your blood pressure if you don't read on. 

So...how come I - with 2 degrees and a teaching diploma - know so little about Scottish history? Well, I think it's not an accident. I could try taking you back to the Scottish Wars of Independence, but I can't do that with any conviction because of sheer ignorance on my part. So let's go back to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707.

This was followed by the Jacobite Revolution of 1715 and the big one in 1745. There's a tendency to miss the connection but these 'rebellions' showed the Scots had not given up on the possibility of independence after 1707. And if, as a result, things were bad in Scotland in 1707 and 1715, they went  to hell in a handcart after 1745.

1745 was followed by a long period of repression. Some of us will tell you the repression was intended to reduce Scotland to a county to the north of Northumbria. Some of us argue that the repression never ended.

Here's one suggestion of how it was done:

First you divide the country. There's the Lowlands, Scots-speaking and about to be swept up in an industrial revolution that will make and break many communities. The Lowland Scots have already started moving off the land (their own clearances) and they will move to the urban areas of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. Some of them will be involved in the slave trade, in dealing with cotton and tobacco (which we will never talk about). Some folk will get very rich in the second half of the 18th century. The richest will have their children educated in schools that emphasise their Britishness, not their Scottishness. The aristocracy will go even further and send their children south to be educated. There they will no longer see themselves as lairds but as landowners. The aspiring classes will abandon the Scots language and then despise people who speak it. The age of Robert Burns (in my opinion) is a one-off: after Burns, poetry and song will be in English. Before we know it, the way to get on is to speak English. This in a country where till about 1750 the languages of the courts and the law were Latin, French and Scots. 

Then there's the Highlands. You start by calling the population 'the Irishers,' on the grounds that they speak Gaelic. You make them different from the rest of the population. You tell everyone their ancestors were not native Scots. Lies, of course. But they are different from the Lowlanders and they scared the crap out of the Lowland middle-classes in 1745 by how close they got to their doors. You use education to neutralise the danger from the Irishers: schools are set up where speaking Gaelic is punished. Highland dress is banned - as above. The people who had previously thought of themselves as clan chiefs with a responsibility to look after their own go away to be educated and come back unable to speak Gaelic or Scots, but every inch the English aristocrat and with the same ambitions: to make money out of their Highland territory so they can enjoy the lifestyle of their southern counterparts. The Highland Clearances then follow. 

And that - finally, I hear you say! - brings me to the matter of museum displays - or one in particular.

I have two beefs with the Arran Heritage Museum. Firstly, it misses an opportunity to promote Arran Gaelic. The people of Arran spoke Southern Gaelic. It had many links with the Gaelic still spoken in places like Gigha, Islay, Jura, Mull and Colonsay. It could so easily have been promoted in the displays at the museum. You know what I'm not saying here: are there any local people on the board who could give the rest a steer when it comes to authenticity?

The exhibit also glosses over the Clearances. Yes, there were 'clearances' or 'improvements' according to the Arran Heritage Museum, right across Scotland. These had to do with changes in agriculture that were happening across Europe. I know about this. I used to volunteer at the museum of Rural Life in East Kilbride and, in the absence of any direction from museum staff as to what I was meant to tell visitors, I read up. The agricultural revolution of the late 18th century encouraged landowners to mechanise, to plant different crops, to rotate - to be more scientific in their approach, in fact. It didn't necessarily mean kicking people off their crofts and smallholdings across Arran, forcing them to emigrate. That, I think, was a decision taken by the local landowners and needs to be investigated.

The good people of the Arran Heritage Museum should revise the cards they have attached to their exhibit. 

Do I take the same approach to - for example - the investigation of Glasgow's role in the slave trade? You betcha!