Part 4

Let me add here that Scotland is not only the most neglected country in Europe to-day, but the most highly taxed. A vehicular and passenger bridge across the Forth is refused to Scotland by Englishmen, but Scots must contribute towards the £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 granted for a bridge across the Thames. Scotland’s housing is a disgrace to Western civilization, although Scots builders are such efficient workmen that they are welcomed in England and overseas. Scotland has the highest death-rate, the highest sickness-rate, and the highest infant mortality rate in the British Isles, although naturally it is no less healthy than England, Ireland or Wales. Scotland contains 2,000,000 acres of land which are certified as suitable for cultivation and small holdings, although during the last ten years her agricultural population decreased by 15,000. There are fewer small holdings in Scotland now than in 1911, when the Small Landholders Act was passed by the London Parliament. Like facts can be adduced in regard to every other aspect of Scottish affairs. They are the inevitable counterparts of her cultural declinature. Verily “Without the Vision the people perish.”

VI

Several reviewers of the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher’s biography of the late Viscount Bryce have expressed their surprise that Bryce had not at least some measure of practical success with his first legislative love, the Bill to give free access to Scottish mountains and moors. As one of them well remarked, “Forty years ago there was no more popular measure. The mention of it on a public platform never failed to jog a lackadaisical audience into enthusiasm. How thankful many a Liberal orator felt that he could wind up by declaring his ‘whole-hearted concurrence in principle and in part with that measure sponsored by the Member for South Aberdeen, which would give the people of Scotland freedom to enjoy their health-giving heritage.’ It was a measure easy to advocate and difficult to oppose, even in the days before the motor car had driven the pedestrian from the by-ways as well as the highways. But to this day not one practical step in its realization has been taken; there is still no legal access to Scottish mountains and moors.”

It is, indeed, one of the most curious of all puzzles in political psychology. Of the reality of the need for it, and of the abundance of public support, there is no question. Why, then, is nothing done? Whoever can answer that question can explain the whole position of Scotland to-day. It is not enough that a measure should be clamantly called for by the needs of the Scottish situation; it is not enough that the mere mention of it should be sufficient to jog the most apathetic body of Scottish electors into enthusiasm; it is not enough that it should have the support of the overwhelming majority of the Scottish M.P.s of all parties. All these three considerations can be fulfilled, and have been fulfilled, in respect to Scottish Home Rule and other questions, and yet not only is nothing at all done, but the proposed solution never even emerges into what is known as “the sphere of practical politics.” Why is this?

But, whatever the reason, it is obviously not to the credit of the Scots M.P.s and their constituents that such measures should have to be supinely forgone; the realities of the Scottish national position treated as unrealities while the catch-vote tactics of professional politics are permitted to monopolize public and Parliamentary attention; and the whole principle of democracy in regard to Scottish affairs stultified in this obscure but overwhelming fashion. Somehow or other the situation must be changed, so that measures corresponding to the actual requirements of our nation can be carried into the field of practical politics—and not allowed to “fail to carry” in this way. The whole impression of Scottish politics is like that of a man dominated by a sort of a nightmare he cannot shake off. He would fain get back to his true self—but he cannot move. Just as reading certain papers one gets a wholly disproportionate and unfortunate conception of the world as a place where murders, divorces and all sorts of sensations and scandals are dominant—so the present political system entirely distorts and misrepresents the real condition of Scottish affairs and bogs the attention of the electors in all manner of “professional political” issues which have little or no bearing on their interests, while the latter are excluded from the “sphere of practical politics.” What is wanted is a movement to shake off all the old shibboleths, the tyranny of the catch-phrases; and to found a new conception of politics on the basis of a practical concentration upon the actualities of our national situation.

The Scottish Protestant Churches have manifested increasing alarm for several years over what has become known as the “Irish Invasion” of Scotland. There is no dispute as to the facts. The Irish population is rapidly increasing; the native Scottish population is rapidly declining. The former is mainly confined to the big industrial centres; the latter is leaving the cities, but to a still greater extent is leaving the countryside. The position is that, owing to Irish, and other alien immigration, our urban congestion is not being relieved by the continual drain of emigration. All that is happening is that a certain proportion of Scottish people is being replaced there annually by an equivalent of un-Scottish people. While this is happening in the towns, which, despite all the emigration, continue to show 50 per cent. more unemployment than in England, our rural areas are being steadily depopulated of their irreplaceable native peasantry—and nobody is taking their place. The seriousness of the matter on either count cannot be exaggerated. But the vital thing is not the influx of Irish and other aliens, but the exodus of Scots. It is due to our present economic system—to the condition of Scottish industries on the one hand which renders them incapable of paying adequate wages to Scottish employees and ready, therefore, to supplant them with cheaper Irish labour, and, on the other hand, to the lack of a progressive and native agricultural policy. The causes are political and economic, and if the consequences have religious and social bearings, these should not lead to any misconception as to the causes and any confusion as to how these can, and should be, dealt with. Sectarian trouble, for example, over a purely economic question, is not likely to help matters. This is the danger some of the Scottish Protestant Ministers are running. Their failure to penetrate to the real causes is blinding them to the only solution. That solution is a re-orientation of Scottish affairs on such a basis that Scottish industries and interests would not be systematically sacrificed to English, but developed in accordance with the particular requirements of Scotland, as they could be developed if Scotland were not compelled to pay, as it is under the present system, upwards of £120,000,000 per annum to the Imperial Exchequer, out of which it receives back only some £30,000,000. If the Scottish contribution were equitably applied, many millions a year would become available for Scottish commercial and industrial developments, and not only could the flow of Scottish emigration overseas be arrested, but a stream back to Scotland would speedily set in if Scotland could offer its exiled people anything like the conditions they are obtaining in the colonies. They did not want to emigrate. Economic conditions forced them. Only economic conditions can bring them back. This will never happen so long as a system is applied which is willing to spend £2,000 in settling a Scots overseas, but unwilling to spend £1,000 to settle him at home—although the percentage of such home settlements as have been effected (a miserably small percentage of the applications) which has been successful has been much greater than amongst overseas settlements, relatively expensive as the latter are. Most important of all is the necessity for devising and financing a thorough-going agricultural policy for Scotland, designed to do for it, in accordance with its specific requirements, something like what Denmark and other small nations have achieved for themselves by co-operative methods. But what hope is there for the initiation of any such policy under the present system? Scottish Independence is an indispensable preliminary to any attempt to solve Scottish problems in such a fashion as may arrest the deplorable efflux of Scottish people and the progressive dereliction of the Scottish soil.

Dealing with the question of Irish Immigration, the Committee on Church and Nation of the Established Church of Scotland says: “There are only two explanations of the great racial problem that has arisen in Scotland—the emigration of the Scots and the immigration of the Irish people. There does not seem to be any hope of alleviation of this problem in the future. All available evidence points to its intensification. The outlook for the Scottish race is exceedingly grave. If ever there was a call to the Church of Scotland to stand fast for what men rightly contend dearest—their nationality and their traditions—that call is surely sounding now, when our race and our culture are faced with a peril which, though silent and unostentatious, is the gravest with which the Scottish people has ever been confronted.”

This is true—but not exactly in the sense the Committee intends. It will not do to identify Scottish nationality and traditions wholly with Protestantism. There has always been a considerable native Catholic population, and most of the finest elements in our traditions, in our literature, in our national history, come down from the days when Scotland was wholly Catholic. Neither, in speaking of a “silent and unostentatious peril” will it do to overlook the fact that Scotland has been steadily subject to Anglicization ever since the Union. This, since it does not raise the “religious bogey” in the way the Irish immigration does, is apt to be overlooked, but it should have at least as much attention as the other from the “Scottish” Churches, if at last they are seriously concerned with Scottish nationalism, and not merely with a sectarian issue. Until they face the whole issue of Scottish Nationalism and define what they mean by it and by a national culture, they will be suspected of merely using the term to cover an interest in special issues by no means synonymous with it, however importantly they may be related to it. But the part is not greater than the whole, and an all-round statesman-like attitude is what is necessary, and should be forthcoming from a Church that is truly Scottish and has the deepest interests of Scotland at heart. Nor will these ministerial protagonists gain anything by suggesting that “Scottish employers of labour ought to do their utmost to retain their fellow-countrymen at home.” The suggestion takes no cognizance of economic realities. Nor is the suggested restriction of immigration any more feasible under the existing system. It is impossible to discriminate against the Irish in that way as long as we are co-members of the British Empire. If anything is to be done it must be along the lines of re-acquiring Scottish control of Scottish affairs, and more particularly such a measure of financial autonomy as would enable projects like the mid-Scotland ship canal, land settlement on a far greater scale, the creation of co-operative agencies in our agriculture, afforestation and so forth, to be developed in a way the House of Commons has not allowed—in short, to undo the present neglect of, and contempt for, Scottish affairs, and their treatment, where they have had any, within the limits of alien and inappropriate conceptions, which are largely responsible for the pass to which we have been brought, and which cannot be undone until we have once again a Parliament of our own and are free to move on the axis of our own mentality.

VII

“We should be the last to assert that there are no aspects of the smaller nationalism worth conserving,” says another opponent; “there are many, but the best of them are alive and effective in Scotland to-day, and they have no necessary connection with the structure of Government. But Scotland, without losing her sense of herself as a Scottish nationality, has attained to a full and complete sense of a larger nationality, and she is not going to throw off that sense of partnership in larger nationality under the leadership of archaic and thrown-back minds, all of them belonging to the largely denationalized region of Clydeside.” Now the fact of the matter is that no valuable aspect of “the smaller nationalism” is permitted to function, except under extraordinary handicaps, by the conditions of progressive Anglicization (in violation of even such safeguarding clauses as the Treaty of Union contained), which have increasingly dominated Scotland during the past hundred years. Scotland has ceased to hold any distinctive place in the political or cultural map of Europe. The centralization of book-publishing and journalism in London—the London monopoly of the means of publicity—has reduced Scottish arts and letters to shadows of their former or potential selves, qualitatively beneath contempt in comparison with the distinctive arts and letters of any other country in Europe. There is no Scottish writer to-day of the slightest international standing. Scotland connotes to the world “religious” bigotry, a genius for materialism, “thrift,” and, on the social and cultural side, Harry Lauderism and an exaggerated sentimental nationalism, which is obviously a form of compensation for the lack of a realistic nationalism. No race of men protest their love of country so perfervidly as the Scots—no country in its actual conditions justifies any such protestations less. Every recent reference book in any department of human activity shows the position to which Scotland has degenerated. “Europa, 1926” (although it is presumably designed for British readers) lists contemporary Czech and Bulgarian poets, litterateurs, musicians, etc. (the bare names—which convey nothing!) but it excludes Scotland completely. Ireland, on the contrary, has a section to itself, and a special article on the boundary question. Professor Pittard’s “Race and History,” doing justice to every other people under the sun, deals only very slightly and imperfectly with Scotland, and fails to take account of any of the newer material, _e.g._, the works of Tocher. Like examples can be multiplied in every direction.

Again, letters from Paris, or “Our Irish Letter,” etc., are familiar features of English newspapers. Whoever saw a “Scottish Letter”? Concern with Scottish interests of any kind has been so completely excluded from publicity, has been made so completely a case of “beating the air,” that the usual headlines following a “Scottish Night” at Westminster are “Absent Members—Empty Benches—During Discussion on Scottish Estimates,” while from the report it appears that the debate resolves itself into a potpourri of stale jokes. Scotland alone of all European countries that have ever been in anything like its position relatively to any other country, has failed to develop a Nationalist Movement capable of affecting the practical political situation in some measure or other. Why have the Scottish members of all parties who have supported the numerous successive Scottish Home Rule measures acquiesced so tamely in their defeat at the hands of the English majority? There must be more in this acquiescence than meets the eye. It represents an abrogation of themselves, for all effective purposes, as the political leaders of Scotland of which it is inconceivable that they should be guilty, unless—behind the ostensible position—they were cognizant of a power against which they were incapable of contending, a power so possessed of the monopoly of mass publicity that it could completely stultify them by its all-pervasive _suppressio veri, suggestio falsi_ the instant they went beyond a given line.

Contrasting the pre-Union achievements and promise of Scottish arts and letters with the beggarly results since, it is not too much to assert that Scottish Nationality was sold for “a mess of pottage,” and that Scotland has since been paying the price by submitting to the diversion of her entire energies into purely materialistic channels—not, however, as the present condition of Scotland and Scottish industries shows, for its own benefit. For whose, then? That I shall attempt to indicate. But, first of all, it cannot be too strongly stressed that its social, commercial, and industrial conditions to-day afford strong _prima facie_ evidence that if, as is commonly contended, Scotland has owed a great deal materialistically (whatever it may have lost in other directions) to its Union with England, it has now wholly ceased to derive any such advantages; the boot, indeed, is on the other foot; and on that, as on other grounds, it is high time to reconsider the relationships between the two countries.

What prevents the development of well-informed and positive policies in regard to such problems as that of the Scottish Highlands? Col. John Buchan, M.P., expressed the opinion in a letter to the present writer that “it is impossible to make up one’s mind on the Scottish Home Rule question—the necessary facts, and figures are not available.” Why are they not available? In certain directions these have been systematically refused by Government Departments—or purposely embodied along with the English in such a way that comparisons between the two countries cannot be instituted. In other directions the refusal of financial facilitation, as Mr William Graham, M.P., has pointed out, has resulted in the creation of a tremendous leeway in the economic and social documentation of Scotland, so that in practically every direction laborious independent research is necessary to get at the facts and figures. They are nowhere readily available.

The vested interests of the Scottish daily papers are all part and parcel of the sequelæ of the Union. They all “make a show” of Scottishness by dealing in windy and suitably contradictory generalizations with Scottish topics—but they all toe the secret line. Letters sent in by readers are carefully censored. Opinions may be expressed (preferably anti-nationalist, or, better still, merely sentimentally nationalist), but facts and figures are not permitted—or, at all events, only isolated ones. Nothing can get published that attempts to relate facts and figures in regard to Scottish subjects to each other, and thus, to a national policy of any kind. There is not a single paper that dare publish a series of articles dealing thoroughly and systematically either with the case for Scottish Home Rule or with any of the major social or economic problems of Scotland. Nor dare they relax their vigilance in respect of the utterance of Scottish M.P.s in Parliament. Only so much is allowed “through”; the rest must be kept back in the sieve. What does appear must appear so fragmentarily and disjointedly—and be so offset by the facetiousness and belittlement of leaders and tittle-tattle paragraphs—that it cannot conduce to the creation of any “well-informed and positive policy.” What hidden interests behind the newspapers dictate this corruption of their natural functions and insist upon a journalism to bamboozle rather than educate the public—a journalism to make “confusion worse confounded” rather than to clarify national issues in a systematic and rational fashion? What is the meaning of the whole position and policy that is, superficially, so determinedly unintelligible?

It is utterly irrational to find all the real practical issues of a nation “outwith the sphere of practical politics” and that sphere monopolized by professional-politician issues, few of which have the most indirect bearing upon national realities. It is utterly irrational to find a whole electorate bemused and misled (for all practical purposes) by such an abracadabra. That is the position of Scotland to-day. All the Scottish papers aver that the demand for Scottish nationalism is made by “a handful of fanatics,” and has no real weight of “public opinion” behind it—but what is “public opinion,” and how far is it reflected by a Press which, in a country which has always been overwhelmingly radical and republican, and where to-day a third of the entire electorate vote Socialist, is solidly sycophantic and anti-socialist? _The Glasgow Herald_, in a recent leader, observed that there was no need for street-corner oratory in these days of a great free Press whose columns are open for the expression of all manner of opinion, and its editor, Sir Robert Bruce, is frequently to be heard dilating on the high status and professional integrity of the journalist to-day. Yet it is simple fact that there is no free Press and that journalists hold their jobs by opportunism and cannot afford to “own their own souls.” A man with “ideas of his own” is of no use in a modern newspaper office. The vigilance of the Press censorship—the ubiquitous range and insidiousness of the policy behind it—is such that even _The Glasgow Herald_ does not, and cannot, permit signed correspondence on such subjects as Scottish music or drama, for example (let alone politics), if these go against the ideas of the vested interests concerned with these departments, not to speak of the veiled interests behind these vested interests which “hold all the strings in their hands.” Interplay of opinion is confined to opposing views within a certain range; but the essence of the matter all the time, so far as the ultimate interests are concerned, is “Heads I win, tails you lose.” It is this that makes a goblin of the vaunted Scottish hard-headedness and practicality—induces the amazing supineness of the successful protagonists of Scottish Devolution Measures when these are rejected by the English majority at Westminster—prevents any real Scottish issue emerging into the realm of “practical politics”—makes the systematic neglect of Scottish interests of all kinds a subject for stereotyped jokes in the Scottish Press (professedly favourable to “legitimate” nationalist aspirations—in China)—prevents different sections of the Scottish public realizing that their diverse grievances and difficulties spring from a common centre and denies them those publicist services which would effectively relate consequence to cause—and foists, not least upon Scotsmen themselves, that stock conception of the “canny Scot,” which is so belied by the actualities of our national position that it can only be accounted for by saying that if, as M. Delaisi argues, government is impossible unless a myth of some kind is foisted upon the “people,” then, so far as Scotland is concerned, its present disastrous condition is due to the fact that the existing myth is out of touch with realities to a degree so abnormal that history presents no parallel to it.

Discussing the possibilities of a Scottish Renaissance I have written elsewhere that the Credit Reform proposals of Major C. H. Douglas will be “discerned in retrospect as having been one of the great contributions of re-oriented Scottish genius to world-affairs,” and that I wished to record my unqualified pride and joy in the fact that of all people in the world a Scotsman—one of the race that has been (and remains) most hag-ridden by commercial Calvinism, with its hideous doctrine of ‘the need to work,’ ‘the necessity of drudgery,’ and its devices of ‘thrift,’ and the whole tortuous paraphernalia of modern capitalism—should have absolutely ‘got to the bottom of economics,’ and shown the way to the Workless State.