Stuart McHardy

The Gatekeepers

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

Return to home page

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.

Return to home page

Comments

[thisguy]

excellent and insightful article.IMO undoubtedly many of the main barriers to the continued progress of the scottish people to a position of self determination are cultural and not overtly political.In fact if culture is taken as the Bildung of the individual then our socious is the area in which real change must be effected and the politics will follow.

[Mike Small]

A great article Stuart, I couldnt agree with you more. Our ignorance of our own history is frightening, endemic, worsening and institutional, despite the publishing ventures and undoubted successes you mention.

[linjellet]

Viscount Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret, has been named as the royal at the centre of a gay porn blackmail scandal in Britain.

The 45-year-old, who can't be named in Britain because of court restrictions, was outed on US television.

Ian Strachan, 30, and Sean McGuigan, 40, are being held in custody until they appear at London's Central Criminal Court on December 20 on blackmail charges, prosecutors said.

[Angus Robertson]

At last, I thought it was just me that had noticed the way the BBC behaved. Nicely written. Its about time the European courts saw the way that the BBC (and the rest of the media)is used to influence anti-Independance in Scotland. Scotland is under a dictatorship because of the way the British contolled media blatantly lie and missrepresent the SNP, and spout their own propaganda, this would not be possible in most other European states.

[meker]

Most people who rant on about Scottish "tradition" have very little idea what tradition they are referring to. To find a Scotland unimpinged by English wars or the economic catastrophy caused by the reformation.
(we had a reformation while most of the rest of the continent had a renaissance!) you have to go a long way back. eg see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Scotland_in_the_High_Middle_Ages

Julius Caesar wrote 2000 years ago that Britain was inhabited by a race that lived mainly on meat and milk. Look into any McDonalds today and you will see the same story.

We need to move away from using the English model back to the pre reformation Scotland and restart our stillborn renaissance.

Michael Eker

[Masters Dissertation Help]

Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.