Perpetual Penance

by Rab Clark

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Over the past few months we've offered, via Twitter, to publish any coherent case advocating Scotland's continued membership of the 'United Kingdom'.

We haven't received any.

The following is from a friend of OTS and presents an unusual angle for supporting maintenance of the Union.

We promised to publish submissions in full, so here it is.

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Hi Rab,

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I noticed that you still haven’t had anyone take up your offer to present a case for Scotland staying in the UK, so here’s my effort. I’m not expecting that you’ll publish it in full but it can be summed up in one sentence: ‘Scotland remaining as part of the UK is a fitting punishment for not having the balls to leave it.’

I’m not a politician and never have been but I’ve been around some (mostly aspirational middle-class graduates) and I was very active - for the Yes campaign - during the run-up to the referendum. All seems a long time ago now, much longer than a decade. But I’ve finally faced up to some unpleasant truths which are as hard to accept as they are to explain.

Who exercises ‘freedom of speech’? When you look for examples you find out how rare it is. People who aren’t self-employed, for example, willingly surrender that freedom, at least in part. They can still have opinions but they mustn’t voice them. (Commercial interest and all that.) The politicians in all the major parties are bound by the whip, they have to toe the party line. That’s understood by everyone involved, so if you really value your ‘right’ to speak freely on whatever subject then you just don’t join one of them. It’s straightforward enough. It helps explain why taxi-drivers are perceived as being so opinionated - they have time to develop their own thoughts and voice them and they have a captive audience. (They don’t have someone ‘looking over their shoulder’ if you like, even though they do.)

‘A job for life’ used to be a thing. You could land, say, a council job doing whatever and so long as you kept your nose clean and did exactly what was asked of you, no problem, you could just clock-in, clock-out. Might be a shitey boring job but at least you had some security, you could look ahead, make plans. That’s gone. People fight for whatever gigs there are, undercut each other, make their families and friends ‘successful bidders’. But ‘public life’ still has some decent jobs up for grabs and if you can get in and you play your cards right you can get a good run at it, especially if you’re adaptable - not perhaps a ‘job for life’ but a job for as long as you stay on-message.

‘Being adaptable’ is a euphemism for ‘political pragmatism’ which is itself a euphemism for ‘principle-free’. Doesn’t matter if you’re secretly a heartfelt Marxist, you can land a gig as a Conservative councillor if you make the right noises at the right time. And the converse applies. That’s why we have this never-ending line of careerists who jump at every chance to appear before a camera even if it means saying the opposite to what they were telling friends five minutes previously. They’ve all had the same media training, how to stand, how to look earnest, how to deflect or ignore questions. And the ones who are best at it go the furthest. It’s why most of them have that haunted look, as if they’re expecting a hand on their shoulder at any moment. They’re thinking ‘Can I keep getting away with this for one more week? Month?’ The bills are getting paid and they’re saving a bit, the partner has a few holidays arranged, they’re settling into the new house and the pension pot is coming along. ‘Just one more year…’ The motivation isn’t hard to understand. But who decides how far they can go? That’s another kettle of shite altogether. Look at the state of the SNP. 

We will always be locked into the UK and it doesn’t matter what percentage of us tell pollsters that we’ve had enough of it and want out, the same charade will be enacted every four or five years and we’ll be told to accept that this is ‘democracy’, that ‘the people have spoken’. Even if less than half of the electorate even bother to take part, it doesn’t matter. There’s no way for abstention to count as worthy of scrutiny because the abstainers have somehow betrayed their ancestors by refusing to take part in a political process which is rigged from top to bottom. We can’t win. If we ever manage to upset the system, as we did via the SNP in 2011, the state gets busy and makes sure the aberration won’t stand. The 2014 referendum was a one-off. It won’t happen again and everyone knows it.

It all sounds so negative, I’m sorry. But sometimes you have to face up to reality no matter how horrible it is. And the reality is that Scotland is a colony. Makes me a bit nauseous even writing that but it’s the truth. Scots were never asked whether or not they wanted to union with England. Had we been asked we would’ve said no. We’ve had 300 years under Westminster rule and we’re knackered. Whatever will was mustered and channeled by the pro-independence movement of the 20th century has now dissipated and it feels as if the hope which remained post-referendum has now evaporated through sheer fatigue. 

I’ve always tried to find some kind of objectivity by seeing myself as a ‘normal’, ‘average’, ‘typical’ Scottish male and more often than not that’s been a handy rule-of-thumb. I’m not radical in any real sense. My views, if loudly expounded in a public forum, would not result in me being lynched by passers-by, although I might risk arrest for some kind of ‘public order’ offence (e.g. not addressing my fellow Scots from a designated ‘free speech’ area). So I’m guessing that how I feel is pretty much the same as many people of my age across Scotland - I’m dog-tired and haven’t the energy to get angry any longer. Doesn’t matter if my indignation is ‘righteous’ or not, it’s just precious energy wasted.

We can all dish out blame. And we all know who is held chiefly responsible for the moribund state of the SNP and the utter vacuity of the ‘only vehicle’ excuse still being trotted out by the Sturgeonites. The SNP is finished. But justice delayed is justice denied. That’s what they say, right? I don’t see any justice coming over the hill for any of the traitors who have so effectively destroyed the dreams of generations and done it with an arrogance we would normally associate with the very worst Oxbridge mandarins populating Whitehall. 

I live in a part of Scotland where the poor and the lower middle-classes rub shoulders more often than they (perhaps) do elsewhere. I see people who have next-to-nothing going around the mall and the supermarkets, waiting in the queues alongside folk who are doing okay. And what I see, for the most part, is kindness and good humour. I still believe that people are fundamentally decent and, if left to their own devices, would look after one another perfectly well. But we mustn’t be allowed to demonstrate that basic empathy and solidarity because it would set a ‘bad’ example and give people ‘ideas’.

The English have always been afraid of Scots and they still are. ‘North Britain’ is something which mystifies and terrifies them. So they spent a few quid on securing the ‘parcel of rogues’, got us by the balls, got it all tied up nice and neat in 1707 and haven’t let go since. They’d still be holding on whether or not oil and gas and renewables existed. They need to keep us ‘catch’t’ and humiliated, divided and fearful. They’re experts at it. They exported our people to help populate their colonies overseas and fight wars to expand those colonies further, making us complicit in crimes against humanity for which we can never truly atone. That in itself would be reason enough to leave what is meant to be a voluntary union. But no. Instead, we have to remain as spectators as yet another genocide grinds on. Ireland can raise its voice. We can’t. Our ‘position’ on Gaza, Ukraine and whatever else is decided by whoever is issuing the orders to the current Scotgov administration. We are part of what’s happening whether we like it or not and we’re not on the good side. What we think doesn’t matter but it’s still important enough that it must be suppressed - that’s where supine colonial administrators earn their filthy lucre and if they don’t deliver then they’re dealt with accordingly. 

So Rab, that’s it. That’s my case for remaining in the UK - the humiliation and theft will continue and we’ll just have to watch our old people suffer and our local services turn to shit. We just don’t care enough, about each other or the generations to come, and their disdain will be our legacy. 

I expect that you’ll probably get some pushback for publishing this but for every respondent who rails against cowardice and insists that ‘the dream shall never die’ there will be many others who know in their hearts, even if they never use their ‘freedom of speech’ to voice it, that we are indeed a subjugated and fractured people who’ve been done up like a kipper.

We must thole that shame, bear the pain generated by whatever hope lingers, and watch our children and grandchildren being born into the same perpetual penance.

Wha’s like us, eh?

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Best to you and yours, as aye,

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Tam D.

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