The night

they tried

to buy me

The new democracy: part 2

Kenneth Roy

Increasingly these days, I am reminded of a conversation in the early years of devolution with a young, ambitious civil servant at the Scottish Executive (as it was then known), who told me confidently that my compliance, and the compliance of people like me, could be bought.
     I found this an intriguing idea and asked her what she meant. She explained that, if I played my cards right, this new charity I had launched called the Institute of Contemporary Scotland could be eligible for a grant from central funds to further its philanthropic work. It had not occurred to me until that moment that the Scottish Executive would be in the least interested in giving me a grant for anything.
      Her next statement was less encouraging. She acknowledged with admirable candour that there was an inevitable price to pay for such support. We would be expected to co-operate and not to rock the boat. She did not, of course, put it quite so coarsely, but that was the message. Compliance – which I took to mean silence – in contentious matters would be part of any bargain struck – implicit and unspoken, needless to say. This (she strongly implied) was how it was for all public institutions and voluntary organisations dependent on public funding.
     I admit it: I lost interest at once. I realised I was temperamentally unsuited to such patronage. It could even be a genetic disorder of some sort. I failed, at any rate, to pursue the interesting offer; the one part of the operation which did require grant-funding, if it was to happen at all, was hived off as soon as practicable.
     This is, however, how most of official Scotland works. It explains why there is so little public criticism other than in polite, essentially acquiescent terms. Everyone has been bought one way or another – by grants or promises of grants, the fear of their withdrawal, the tantalising prospect of appointment to public bodies or the appointment itself, the possibility of further advancement, the flattery of honours and letters and all that guff. It happens in all societies, but it counts disproportionately in one so small and relatively insecure as Scotland. The marvel is not that most people and organisations can be bought, but that we come so humiliatingly cheap.

     There is a positive flip side to this bargain: much useful work is done. Lives are improved. Worthwhile enterprises are administered. But it is done rather timidly, without the hint or prospect of a more radical prospectus to deal with such Scottish blights as poverty.
     Until recently, it didn't matter much since the politics was so sterile. Labour rule continued unbroken, unquestioned, from my parents' generation to the day before yesterday; we inhabited a public environment which was safe, arrogant, complacent and, in local government, all too often corrupt. We all knew where we stood. You got a grant or a job or a council house if you behaved yourself.
     'Let's go with Labour' was the election slogan of 1964, the year in which I started to take an interest in politics. But in Scotland, we were going nowhere fast. No wonder the people grew restless. We are a surprisingly patient lot up here, but even the Scots became thoroughly disenchanted in the end: bored and insulted by the Labour Party, which had taken us for granted for so long.
     So we have a new political order. All things considered, it's scarcely surprising. But it is swiftly clear that there is a huge problem with it too.
     That night, when it was suggested that I might care to be purchased, there was a delicate balance in this small society. Even if the public institutions conducted themselves all too impeccably for the reasons I have just described, the national politics of Scotland was uncharacteristically healthy for a brief period. Labour, at first under the leadership of Donald Dewar, was being assisted in its government by the Liberal Democrats. There was a pioneering spirit of co-operation. There was, at the same time, an effective opposition led by the Scottish National Party.
     What is there now? The SNP will colonise the institutions of Scotland, just as the Labour Party once did; it is in the nature of the beast. But it will do so – is already doing so – without the counter-balance of strong, coherent political opposition. Now there is simply nothing but the governing party itself. Institutional Scotland will be bought at the sales for the usual knockdown price, the Labour Party is washed up, the Liberal Democrats finished, Mr Sheridan in prison; and so it goes on – or rather, doesn't.
     There is another distinction to be made. While Labour murdered reputations privately in smoke-filled rooms, the new political order does so full-frontally. Perversely, we might almost be grateful for the frank quality of the character assassination going on. The example of Lord Hope, sacrificed on the gibbet, is indeed a salutuary warning. More compliance to come? You bet.

Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review