Nine days from now,
Scotland may feel
like a different country
Kenneth Roy
It was the strangest day of my childhood and, I imagine, of many others. The boys and girls of Greenhill Primary School were led by our teachers out of the playground and down a country road to a green hut which served as the village hall. We were then instructed to sit before an unfamiliar box called a television and watch, in a state of silent wonder, the grainy images of a solemn ceremony of which we understood little.
None of us had seen a television before, and the religious service magically transmitted on its screen – as it was actually happening, our teachers assured us – seemed so remote from anything we had ever known or experienced that it had a fairy-tale quality. After the young woman had been crowned, the headteacher switched off the box and we returned to our classsrooms as if nothing had happened. But our lives had been changed. In ways subtle and profound, they would never be quite the same again.
Rothesay (for example) no longer held the same unchallenged appeal as the Scottish working-class child's holiday destination. We still went, of course, with our buckets and spades under grey July skies, but there was a growing clamour for the more seductive alternative of London. The restless curiosity of the second half of the 20th century was born; and, with it, the modern taste for travel. For many children, it was the day when the world revealed itself.
That day in Greenhill, we also learned something about the essential cohesion of the post-war society into which all of us had been born. Even an unprepossessing village 400 miles from the centre of events had been made to feel part of a great unifying force called the monarchy. In time, the wider idea of Britain and Britishness took hold, symbolised by a man called Richard Dimblebly whose weekly 'window on the world' was required viewing in most households. In my own, Mr Dimbleby was disapproved of, for reasons never disclosed, but 'Panorama' was faithfully watched anyway.
We were monarchists and we were unionists. There were few exceptions. The only one I can think of locally – although he did not actually live in the village – was John Rollo, the main employer, a much-respected figure whose attachment to the cause of Scottish nationalism was regarded as an aberration. Nationalism was talked about, on the rare occasions it was talked about at all, as a wild, fringe cause, not at all respectable. The village was solidly, faithfully Labour. And monarchist. And unionist.
It is indeed hard to detect much enthusiasm or excitement about this
strange event in Scottish history.
By the time I was old enough to be a cub reporter on the local paper – having turned up at the door at the age of 13, I slid into full-time employment as soon as legally possible – a confusion of unionism had entered my head. It seemed that, although all of us were unionists, some were more unionist than others. These were Unionists with a capital U. I came to appreciate that Unionists with a capital U were Tories while lower-case unionists were Labour. There were also people called trade unionists, who tended to be communists. How bewildering it all was to a young, unformed mind.
Yet the certainties were simple enough. The West Stirlingshire constituency was the personal fiefdom of Labour's Willie Baxter, while Davie Mann, our Labour councillor, dispensed council house tenancies to the deserving poor and, when he stood down, was succeeded by his son Alfie. The monarch's occasional visits to the area were as eagerly anticipated as the Second Coming, and at the annual dinner of the West Stirlingshire Unionist Association, which I attended as a reporter, there was Blue Nun on the table. It was deferential, it was unsophisticated, it was unchanging. I thought this world of mine would last forever.
I can name the year when it began to unravel. It was 1968, when I heard the startling news that pupils – they were still called pupils then – at the new High School in Inverkeithing were wearing SNP badges on their lapels and that this was a popular new acesssory among the young. Post-war Scotland has been unravelling ever since. In the next nine days, we may come close to the end of an old, done thread.
Tomorrow, most Scots will watch the event in London with benevolent detachment at best – as a celebrity occasion out of the pages of Hello! Mrs Beckham's outfit is the subject of almost as much speculation as the bride's. Afterwards, in London, there will be 800 street parties; in the whole of Scotland, a country of comparable population, there will be two. Why should I find this in the least surprising? At 1 o'clock, in nationalist Kilmarnock, Marks and Spencer will re-open and by Tuesday morning, after the usual Monday off, normal service will be resumed. Even in London they will have to find something else to talk about.
But, here in Scotland, there is more unravelling to do. There is to be an election next Thursday. It is not the talk of the steamie. Last weekend in East Lothian, the constituency of the Labour leader, I saw only three posters, including a solitary red one in a house in back-street North Berwick. It is indeed hard to detect much enthusiasm or excitement about this strange event in Scottish history. We are sleep-walking our way into it, distracted by fine weather, the rolling of Easter eggs, photographs of Catherine Middleton, and a succession of bank holidays. And yet, by Friday morning of next week, with the royal wedding already a distant dream, we may find ourselves waking up to a very different Scotland.
How will it feel? Will we like it? Will we even recognise it? I marvel that, within my own lifetime, it has been possible to travel so far from the green hut at Greenhill and from all it stood for.
Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review
