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Stuart McHardy

The Gatekeepers

Scottish history lecturer, storyteller and author Stuart McHardy examines who controls what in modern day Scotland

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Back in the 1990s the late Robbie Robertson, Assistant Director of the then Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (SCCC) referred in a magazine article to his own organisation as being one of the gatekeepers of Scottish culture. This was in response to the suppression of an SCCC report on the teaching of Scots language and Scottish history, that Robbie had compiled a after a very wide consultation process.  Effectively he was accusing his own board of suppressing Scottish culture.

The idea of the gatekeepers is one that still has relevance. Much has been made over the past couple of hundred years of the fact that Scotland has separate religious, legal and educational systems from England and that this supposedly has helped to preserve Scottish identity. I suggest the opposite is the case and that these institutions have been nothing other than the gatekeepers of a mindset that is Unionist, Imperialist, male chauvinist and fundamentally anti-Scottish, in both cultural and political terms.

The lack of a central place for teaching Scottish history ( and recognising the independent and continued vibrant existence of the Scots tongue) within the Curriculum is part of a bigger picture. As a particular example, back in the 60s, as a student I expressed an interest in studying Robert Burns within the English Department of Edinburgh University. The Oxbridge trained tutor was aghast and told me there was no one in the department who could help with such a bizarre request.

Things have got better since then but the problem remains. The gatekeepers of the law, the universities and to a lesser extent the church have all flourished under the Union and a mindset has arisen that sees anything too overtly Scottish as a threat to the Union. I have never been a member of the SNP but my lifelong commitment to the study of my own culture and history has often led to both politicians and civil servant assuming that I am, and reacting accordingly. In particular the Labour Party whose sleazy domination of Scottish politics has thankfully now been broken, seem to be particularly cursed with this notion. The assumption seems to be that anyone interested in their own culture must be anti-British. This is then generally, through a remarkable process of distorted logic, taken to mean that such people are anti-English.

While I am more than happy to be virulently anti-English in terms of football and rugby, and take umbrage at the number of English people appointed by the gatekeepers to positions of authority within Scottish cultural organisations, I am not anti-English - like many Scots I have family members who are English born. What I am anti is the mindset of those who essentially support the Union because it is the best way to feather their own nests who then try to justify this by supporting the ongoing suppression of Scottish culture.

The current brouhaha regarding the dumbed down and offensive programming of the BBC in Scotland is a case in point. In fact all our media are tarred with the same, bourgeois and sycophantic brush. As an author I am very well aware that the last few decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of books published in, and about Scotland. Yet our so-called national press slavishly follow the agenda of their confreres in London in terms of who and what they review. Given the blinkered metrovincial self-importance that dominates the media in London is it little wonder that the recent row over the “Scottish Six O'Clock News” concept was so virulently resisted within the local branch office of the BBC (EBC?) in Queen Margaret Drive.

At al levels our indigenous culture, literary, musical and in the visual arts is thriving but you would hardly guess from the media. Things are however changing and there is hoped that the schools curriculum will be soon be developed to allow our children the opportunity to know who they are and where they came form. Whether the media notice is another matter.

At University level the presence of such luminaries as Ted Cowan at Glasgow and Tom Devine a in Edinburgh are signs that at last the gate is beginning to creak open, and it is to be hoped that the current administration will take the opportunity to support the teaching and promotion of Scottish culture. The gatekeepers’ problem is that nowadays with post-colonial theory beginning to be applied to Scottish culture their comfortable positions within a British state that has long seen Scotland and the Scots as problems to be managed, will be threatened. An thon wuid be nae bad thing ava.

Stuart McHardy is an author, professional storyteller and lecturer in Scottish history and folklore.

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Kevin Wiliamson

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ASKS IF THE BBC’S DAYS IN SCOTLAND ARE NUMBERED?

A few days before Scotland’s First Minister launched an ambitious and far-reaching “national conversation” on whether Scots should remain part of Britain, a Scottish Broadcasting Commission was established which could conceivably challenge the BBC’s public broadcasting monopoly in Scotland.

The BBC’s Six O’Clock News bulletin – the most influential source of news in the UK – has become central to this debate, with many influential Scots questioning its validity, its quality, its political role, and even its necessity. Many Scots, including Alex Salmond himself, have declared that they want the Six O’Clock News scrapped and replaced by an hour long “Scottish Six”, produced in Scotland, by Scottish journalists.  The remit for a “Scottish Six” would be to cover national and international news, but from a Scottish rather than a London-centric perspective.

Maybe it was in a fit of pique, maybe it was unintentional irony, or maybe it was just confirmation that the BBC’s Six O’Clock News bulletin is no longer fit for purpose, but on the same day (14/7/07) that Alex Salmond launched his White Paper on Scottish Independence, the BBC’s London-based news editors may have sealed their own fate.

No matter which way you look at it, the launch of the SNP’s White Paper on Independence was a big news story, not just here in Scotland, but internationally.  If Alex Salmond’s ambitious project comes to fruition, then Great Britain will go the way of the Soviet Union, and simply cease to exist. To paraphrase that most quintessential of English comedy groups, Britain will become an ex-country.  Deceased.  No more. That this was the biggest news story of the day in the UK is incontestable.  Unless perhaps, you happened to be a dyed-in-the-wool British ostrich, with head stuck firmly up yer Daily Telegraph.

So how did the BBC’s Six O’Clock News team choose to report this important breaking story?  Lead item?  Second item?  Not quite. The lead story was a consumer piece about the recall of plastic toys.  It was a precautionary decision by the company Mattel, which, perhaps, they should have announced through paid advertising in the national press.  This was followed by another similar item on the recall of old phone batteries. Next up was a lengthy feature on how bad weather and flooding were affecting the English tourist trade this summer.  Two lengthy reports were filed from Weston-Super-Mare and the Yorkshire Dales.  This particular item could have been carried any day this month, at any point, in any news bulletin. It was what could have been described as “a filler”. Next was a purely regional story about the murder of a young child in London.  It was reported that police were not searching for anyone in connection with tragedy.  This was followed by another, again purely regional, murder story.

Next up, Scotland!  At last.  Except it was about an e-coli break-out in Paisley.  You have to hand it to the BBC news editors, they love their Scottish health scare stories.  Nobody could say the London BBC news rooms aren’t interested in such things as deep-fried Mars bars, or Glaswegians dying of lung cancer. Would the Paisley food scare be a tenuous Scottish link to the story about the break-up of Britain?  No.  The next item was yet another murder story.  This time about the death of a biker.  In South London.

Finally, almost fourteen minutes into the early evening news bulletin, the BBC editors deigned to broadcast three full minutes on the biggest news story to hit Scotland in our lifetimes.  It had been relegated to “News Item Number 8’.  The low priority given to the piece was, we can only presume, to reassure Her Majesty and the rest of London/England, that it was all just a storm in a whisky jar. The feature consisted of footage of Alex Salmond launching his White Paper.  Followed by an oppositional response from Des Browne (an MP elected to Westminster, London).  Followed by a vox pop on the streets of Edinburgh.

This vox pop was notable, only in that it consisted of just two interviews, each less than ten seconds long.  The first was with a young guy wearing a Scotland football top - who was against Scottish Independence.  The second was with an old woman - who was also against Scottish Independence.  End of vox pop.  Call me old fashioned but it wasn’t quite my idea of either impartiality or depth.
Only the BBC News editors can answer why they chose to respond in this manner.  But I suspect that this travesty of reportage will not have gone unnoticed in the corridors of power at Holyrood, and may well turn out be one of the straws that break the British broadcaster’s back. 

The new Scottish Broadcasting Commission’s remit is wide-ranging, and goes way beyond looking at a “Scottish Six”.  What is now being considered is amending The Scotland Act to transfer all broadcasting powers, currently under the political control of Westminster, over to Holyrood.  The ramifications of this should not be underestimated.  The creation of a separate publicly-funded Scottish Broadcasting Corporation is one option being given serious consideration at the highest level.
And not before time.  Many Scottish license payers feel they are being royally shafted by the current arrangement.  Whilst 9% of the UK’s population lives in Scotland, only 3% of the programmes commissioned by the BBC are produced in this country.  Hardly value for money.

When you add this to the widely perceived London-centric bias that dominates the BBC’s national agenda and output, you can see why the current set-up, just like that of the British state itself, has only itself to blame for hastening its own demise.

Kevin Williamson is a writer, publisher, and daily blogger at The Scottish Patient . His collection of poems, In A Room Darkened, is published by Two Ravens Press (£8.99) on October 15th