Two things last week on the poignancy of happy expectations being crushed.
1. The last scene of Henry IV Part II. I saw the Royal Shakespeare's Company version beamed live at the cinema, with Antony Sher playing Falstaff. It's a melancholy play anyway, about sickness and mortality, but Falstaff takes on a new lease of life on hearing that his glamorous young friend, the Prince of Wales, has finally become king. Then comes the procession. and Falstaff greets the new Henry V-
FALSTAFF. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart! KING. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
Falstaff and Prince Hal in happier times
Antony Sher took a long while to turn round to show his face, so the audience had time to dread the disappointment in it.
The second was this cartoon of the Set Text welcoming its readers:-
English academics on Twitter found their hearts breaking when they saw that.
J K Rowling spoke for me in her measured statement about why she would be voting No come the Scottish independence referendum. Like me she is not Scottish though she has lived in Edinburgh for a long time, she loves where she lives and she understands where many of the Yesses are coming from but she is still voting No.
The more I listen to the Yes campaign, the more I worry about its minimisation and even denial of risks. Whenever the big issues are raised – our heavy reliance on oil revenue if we become independent, what currency we’ll use, whether we’ll get back into the EU - reasonable questions are drowned out by accusations of ‘scaremongering.’
Indeed "FEAR!" is a word chucked at Noes a good deal when they question Salmond and the SNP's cavalier attitude towards the currency that IScotland would use and also the cost of actually setting up a separate state. When I think of the future of IScotland I hear the skirl of IT support staff howling as the new databases in the new government departments crash. The Yesses say Salmond and the SNP are not necessarily going to be the future government in IScotland, but they are IScotland's representatives on earth at the moment, and they are not reassuring.
Rowling continues:-
Of course, some will say that worrying about our economic prospects is poor-spirited, because those people take the view ‘I’ll be skint if I want to and Westminster can’t tell me otherwise’. I’m afraid that’s a form of ‘patriotism’ that I will never understand. It places higher importance on ‘sticking it’ to David Cameron, who will be long gone before the full consequences of independence are felt, than to looking after your own. It prefers the grand ‘up yours’ gesture to considering what you might be doing to the prospects of future generations.
... The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that Alex Salmond has underestimated the long-term impact of our ageing population and the fact that oil and gas reserves are being depleted. This view is also taken by the independent study ‘Scotland’s Choices: The Referendum and What Happens Afterwards’ by Iain McLean, Jim Gallagher and Guy Lodge, which says that ‘it would be a foolish Scottish government that planned future public expenditure on the basis of current tax receipts from North Sea oil and gas’
Rowling was, of course, generally insulted for this statement and for her donation to the No campaign.
I was urged by some Yesses to read this article by Mairi McFadyen of the National Collective in response to Rowling.
The nationalism I feel comfortable with is a civic nationalism, a welcoming narrative, a politics of inclusion where all those who choose to live here, on this part of the planet, are welcome.
I thought the England part of Britain itself wasn't bad at that, including for the many Scots who have moved there to advance their careers. Go to London and look at the ethnic make up. Then look at Edinburgh's. I would say that for an immigrant like me being "British" (civic nationality) is a more comfortable fit than "Scottish" (cultural nationality, which I'll never achieve).
The rest of the article, a response to rather than a rebuttal of Rowling's is of the Radiant Future gushing kind that inspires the Yesses and makes the Noes grumpy.
Now we frequently overhear the #indyref discussed passionately at the taxi rank at 3 o’clock in the morning on a Friday night; in the chippy queue; at the hairdressers. It is being discussed by high school leavers: full of hope, full of promise for life and all the joy and wonders and pain it brings.
And that to me is the nub of my problems with the Yes vote. The Yesses are visionaries. So for them it's uplift and rhapsody, and we are the literal nay-sayers throwing wet blankets.
Ian Bell, in an article which disagrees with Rowling's respectfully and in more factual detail than Mairi McFadyen, says:-
It doesn't hurt, either, to consider the essential nature of the Yes movement, as McFadyen urges. In her telling, the hope for an independent Scotland lies in the very character - in the youth, energy, inventiveness, optimism and desire - of the campaign.
64 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds worry about the economic outlook in an independent Scotland, 41 per cent believe their parents would be financially worse off in independent Scotland, 21 per cent think they would be better off, and 18 per cent say there would be no difference; 39 per cent think their own generation would be financially worse off in an independent Scotland, 25 per cent think they would be better off, and 22 per cent say there would be no difference; 69 per cent say an independent Scotland should keep the pound, 12 per cent say it should have its own currency and six per cent it should adopt the euro.
I don't know if this is a more materialistic young, a social network young character-chatting about football and music with their like in Manchester and Swindon, and playing video games with someone in Liverpool, a young that sees itself heading to London to work one day - but it could be that the young 'uns are growing away from the Braveheart or Red Clydeside vision of where they were born and want as easy access as possible to a larger world of opportunity. Splitting from the rest of the UK closes a door - or at least gives the idea it may be stiffer to open.
Ian Bell's article says of Rowling's doubts about the oil:-
The quickening pace of exploration also demonstrated that the treasure will not be depleted for at least another generation.
However, in the same Sunday Herald's business section (not on line as yet):-
Analysts say oil decline is sharper than thought - and fear for future beyond 2018..
...
Wood MacKenzie, who admit to previously overstating 2013 production by more than a third, paint a significantly less optimistic picture of the outlook for the North Sea than a recent Scottish Government statement, suggesting that even the short-term rises predicted on the current investment boom depend on "timely development and successful start-ups of multiple projects.
But who needs oil when we have hope, energy and vision?
Actually who am I kidding in making any kind of argument about the economy, the oil industry or the currency, of which I understand very little. I agree with this man when he says:-
One of the disfiguring features of the referendum debate is that it is dominated by arguments about economics by people who aren't, in the final analysis, particularly interested in economics. What is not well understood - particularly by London-based commentators who enter the fray - is that there is in Scotland roughly about 25% to 30% of the electorate who are nationalists that would support independence no matter what the consequences. They may believe all this stuff about Scotland being like Norway or Sweden and becoming a beacon of social democracy for the rest of the UK but at base relative poverty is for them preferable to maintaining a relationship that they liken to the occupation of Poland circa 1940.
The softer, and for me more congenial, support for independence comes from means-ends nationalists who view separation as a mechanism to get the sort of policies they want to see. This I've said this already but most of these are socialists and greens. .... If there is a Yes vote in September, it'll be because the Yes campaign have persuaded enough Scots to be nationalists like this, at least for a day. I understand this but it is desperately naive.
That Scotland voted in one UKIP MEP in the European elections was a blow to the softer nationalists, who believe in the Scottish as intrinsically social democratics.
It's passion, not the money. Some look at a map of the British archipelago and see their home. Others look at the map and see the top one third or so with the raggedy edges to the left as their home. One or the other will be the winners on September 18th.
I hate what the raising of nationalist passions is doing. Whatever the outcome on 18th September there will be disappointment and bitterness afterwards. Scottish nationalism is nothing like as poisonous as many other nationalisms from Serbian to the BNP - but it's stirring the pond and that's bringing up ugly, biting beasties.
The Game of Thrones that is the referendum continues.
In today's Sunday Herald Alan Taylor says about "Jakey" Rowling that her backing the No campaign made him wish he'd stuck to Enid Blyton.
In the next paragraph he says "By spooky coincidence Ms Rowling also has a new book to promote."
I've seen both these memes before about J K Rowling. 1) No-one will buy her books now. 2) She's promoting her latest book. 1 rather cancels out 2, I would have thought. And as for 2) said of one of the biggest book sellers in history - well...However the idea of someone having an honest opinion and presenting it with no ulterior motives seems to be beyond many people.
When J K Rowling wrote best-selling children's books that even children who didn't read, would read, she was a force for betterment.
When she showed that a writer could hit the jackpot she was a creatives' beacon of hope.
When she insisted that the popular film adaptations or her books should not be Hollywoodised she was a patriot.
When she recalled her own years of being a single mother dependent on welfare payments and reiterated her support for Labour she was a good socialist.
When she donated considerable sums to clinics treating multiple sclerosis and campaigned for research on the disease because of her own mother's illness she was a heart-string puller.
I think Scots may have even been a wee bit proud that this unassuming woman of considerable achievement chose to live in Edinburgh. At least one coffee house has put up a notice stating that she used to hang out there.
But now she is a bitch; a whore; a traitor; a Tory; a deluded wee hen, all with added sweiry words. Oh, and English as well.
All because she wrote a sane, reasoned article on why she thought Scotland should not go independent and contributed some money to a campaign she believed in.
I do remember when having a baby out of wedlock was a serious stigma for a young woman and her family. This was the 1970s in New Zealand, and often the pregnant woman would have her baby in secret and put it up for adoption. "Gone up north for a while" the family would say about the daughter or sister. A film of that title was made in 1972:-
It starts "Last year there were eight and a half thousand illegitimate births in New Zealand" and in style is much like Cathy Come Home.
"After a young woman falls pregnant, she decides to go against the tide of advice from her family and unsympathetic welfare authorities by keeping her baby. Misery and hardship ensues. . . The story can claim to have effected social change, stirring up public debate about the DPB [Domestic Purposes Benefit – Sole Parent] for single mothers."
In fact I remember a few films made about pregnant single girls and long concerned magazine articles, as part of the general loosening of taboos at the time, with the result that social serices sympathised more and punished less.
The word "illegitimate" has pretty much disappeared now though in those days it was in all our mouths as a social and moral evil. This was the era between shot-gun marriages (the bride was often pregnant at the wedding) and social acceptance.
That seems the dark ages now though it is only a generation ago. New Zealand, however, was not so priest-ridden or conservative as Ireland, which is now in the news with the discovery of 800 bodies of the children of unmarried mothers in a septic tank in Galway.
Here's a fine angry piece by Stephanie Lord on what she calls "Ireland's honour killings".
Women were not allowed keep their babies because the shame that their existence brought upon the community would be far too great. They were imprisoned within Magdalene Laundries to atone for their sins of honour, and their babies were removed from them as part of their punishment – women who dishonoured the community were deemed to unfit to parent.
Contemporary Ireland feigned shock when stories of the Laundries and residential institutions emerged. Perhaps the shock of those who were too young to be threatened with being put in one for “acting up” was genuine, because the institutions started to close as the years went on. But people in their fifties and sixties now, will remember how the “Home Babies” sometimes came to schools, and were isolated by other (legitimate) children, and then sometimes never came back. While those school-children may not have comprehended fully the extent of what happened, their parents and teachers, and the community of adults surrounding them knew.
Ireland as a whole was complicit in the deaths of these children, and in the honour crimes against the women. They were the “illegitimate babies” born to the “fallen women” who literally disappeared from villages and towns across Ireland in to Magdalene Laundries. Everybody knew, but nobody said, “Honour must be restored. We must keep the family’s good name.”....
People did know what went on in those institutions. Their threat loomed large over the women of Ireland for decades. On rare occasions when people attempted to speak out, they were silenced, because the restoration of honour requires the complicity of the community. Fear of what other people will think of the family is embedded in Irish culture...
Imprisoning women in the Magdalene Laundries deserves to be named as an honour crime because of a cultural obsession that believed the family’s good name rested upon a woman’s (perceived) sexual activity that either her father or husband or oldest brother was the caretaker of. Her sentence to the Laundry was to restore the family honour.
So the authorities were not winking at the family stoning or stabbing the disgraceful daughter but instead connived with the Church to imprison her and neglect her children to death. That's not a surprise any more - but I am slightly shocked that the children didn't receive something like a Christian burial.