Leading article

Faced with the excess

of word and deed this

spring, we have a choice

Kenneth Roy

Photograph by Islay McLeod

At Collins Drive, where I wait for the bus in the morning, the daffodils are out in greater profusion than ever. Warplanes – from Canada, we believe – flew over them on Saturday. Soon the people of Libya would see them too.
     The street is named after the man who used to own this village. From here his mansion can be seen across the fields. In its grounds, in the approach to the house, there was a splendid fountain. Collins thought so highly of the fountain that he had it drawn and reproduced on the title page of all the bibles and dictionaries distributed by his firm all over the world.
     The firm is now owned by Rupert Murdoch. The well dried up.
     I expect there is still a market for bibles. Last week I bought one myself, as a gift – a Russian one. Rather beautiful it looked. But does anyone still buy dictionaries? The bottom has fallen out of the word since online meanings, like online everything else, took over. Collins would not have foreseen the end of the popular dictionary. He would have considered dictionary publishing as safe a trade as funeral directing.
     As this has happened, there has been a declining regard for the meaning of words. A grotesque inflation in their use is taking place; we have seen it this week; we see it every hour. Yesterday, the lord advocate (but not for much longer), Elish Angiolini, predicted what she called 'a real apocalypse' of Scottish alcohol abuse unless people were discouraged from touching the stuff.
     So it is no longer enough that we have an apocalypse. We must have a real one. I wonder what an unreal apocalypse looks like. Perhaps it is the version made in Hollywood.

     For once, I agree with Mrs Angiolini. Better late than never. I agree that there is an ever-present danger of a real apocalypse. But it is more likely to originate in the Middle East than in the streets of Scottish towns, where the poor drink to blot out the misery of their lives and the rest of us to extinguish the horror of warplanes over our spring flowers. Where the real apocalypse is more likely to begin, the people are forbidden from drinking at all, lashed or stoned if they do. Presumably Mrs Angiolini would not go quite that far.
     As I digested the possible significance of the lord advocate's disturbing prophecy, the telephone rang. The caller announced himself as a member of the staff of Glasgow University.
     'I thought you should know,' he said, 'there's a police helicopter overhead.' He should be so lucky. He should try our village on a Saturday evening.
     'What's it doing?' I asked.
     'It appears to be assisting in the eviction of some of our students from the Hetherington Club.'
     The Hetherington Club. I know quite a few of the Hetheringtons – I edited a book about one of them – although I never met the patriarch, who was once principal of Glasgow University. I do not think of the Hetheringtons as the clubbable sort. But it seems there is a club in old Sir Hector's honour and that, since last month, it has been occupied by students protesting against the cuts.
     The caller read an email about the nature of what is being described as a 'sit-in'. it seems much good, constructive work has been going on in the Hetherington Club. It has not really been a sit-in, but what Jimmy Reid, their former rector, would have called a work-in. But the university management, wishing to have the club refurbished, grew tired of the student occupation and called in the police.
     Eighty of them arrived, with 18 vehicles and, of course, the helicopter, to remove 15 people. The premises are now ready to receive the decorators. The refurbishment may commence. Where all this leaves the moral authority of the people who run the institution, and govern the professional lives of the gifted people who work there, is less certain. But the Hetherington Club will smell as fresh as a daffy.
     The police action, though intimidatory, was not violent. But it was an example of the general pattern of over-reaction which starts with language. It was part of the 'real apocalypse' theory of modern life espoused by people like Elish Angiolini. It would not be surprising if the chief constable, Mr House, who sent his employees mob-handed into the Hetherington Club, was another supporter of this theory. He is the same Mr House who, after some trouble at a recent Old Firm game, demanded the attendance of the first minister at a 'top-level summit' which turned out, as expected, to be mostly wind and the other thing. That was over-reaction too.

     The warplanes over the daffodils are an extreme form of the malaise. It took General Cameron and his batman Clegg only 45 weeks to decide that running bankrupt Britain was too boring and that what they should be doing was running a war. It is called Odyssey Dawn. The depth of cynicism required to conjure up Odyssey Dawn as a descriptive term can only be imagined; it may be fathomless.
     But the press love it. Let me re-phrase that. There is no 'but' about it. The headlines earlier in the week were a form of violence in themselves. 'Blown to Brits' was one. Another newspaper saw the war as a Premiership needle match and gave the half-time result as Allies 1, Mad Dog 0. If only the hideous game were even approaching half-time. It now appears that we have little idea why we are taking part in this fixture, or when the ref will blow the final whistle, or whether some ominous replay may be necessary on some other foreign field.
     Faced with the excess of word and deed this spring, the helpless have a choice. They can either go down to Collins Drive and smell the flowers or they can retreat into the privacy of their living rooms, get hopelessly drunk, and await the vengeance of Elish Angiolini. Either way, it begins to feel like a real apocalypse.

Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review