On the lack and omnipresence of theatre in modern Scottish politics, and the gamers and stars included. It’s time to re-write the script argues George Gunn.
It was a rainy Friday afternoon in Golspie in 1972 when I received my very first lesson in class awareness. Thurso High School were playing Dunrobin at rugby and I was a prop forward. I was just chosen for this position since I played in objectives for the school football group and they believed along with being a stocky peasant that I was good with my hands. That was the very first error. The 2nd error was my accepting play. Football was, and still is, my puppy love and I wasn’t keen on rugby and have actually grown throughout the years to hate it. In those days Dunrobin Castle was an independent school and the group that took the field versus us were on typical a couple of feet taller than us and a minimum of a stone or 2 much heavier. In reality they were a various types who spoke a various language from us native Gallaibhs from Caithness. We didn’t comprehend a word they said. Nor they us. From the extremely first whistle it went terribly. The group from Dunrobin actually ran right over the top people. I cannot keep in mind ball game however it was something like 100 – 0. We Thurso young boys were unceremoniously squashed into the mud of the independent school playing fields by the well fed boys of the gentility. Later, on the extremely quiet bus that sneaked back North over The Ord and into Caithness and back into familiarity and safety, I kept an eye out of the bus window at the hills and the rain and I believed to myself, “What happens when it stops raining?”
When my bro and I lastly got home to Dunnet later on that day, to my moms scary, she found that my bro had a damaged nose which I had actually contracted scabies. With all the authority that just a number of generations of fish rain gutters from Wick might provide her, she pronounced, “Neither oh ye loons is ever goin til play thon game again!” What my mom was speaking about was rugby, a video game in reality alien to Caithness and just presented in the 1960’s through the big increase of English employees and their households who were the human addition to Thurso since of the growth of the nuclear complex at Dounreay. But I presume what she truly was speaking about was the futility in attempting to handle the gentility at their own video game.
According to DermNet, “Scabies is a highly contagious infestation of the human epidermis. Scabies was described by Aristotle who likened the disease to ‘lice of the flesh’. Scabies presents as a rash with intense itching; it may have a characteristic appearance and distribution.”
If you equate that medical meaning to the political world you might be explaining the Conservative and Unionist Party. Maybe not so odd then that I captured it at an elite independent school. My bro followed my Mother’s command by going to university. I, on the other hand, have actually nursed my rage versus rugby and the gentility and have actually kept it hot certainly since that rainy afternoon in Golspie in 1972.
As fate would have it I was to go back to Golspie the list below year for a really various, however associated, awareness raising occasion. Our English instructor, the famous Margaret “Grannie” Gunn, arranged a bus from Thurso and took her whole class to see an efficiency of “The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil” by the 7:84 Theatre Company in, I believe, the Golspie High School. This showed to be a revelatory minute for me. It was as if I was lifted out of the mud of Dunrobin and was filled with strength, understanding, self-confidence and vigour. Everything ended up being clear. Here was my story. Why did I not understand any of this? Now, at last, it might stop drizzling.
It was not simply the extreme simpleness and happiness of 7:84’s public storytelling – which the story was, at last, our story – however likewise the realisation that the art form of theatre is based upon a deep human requirement to reveal to ourselves the video games of social and class concealment which oppress us and to commemorate the large theatricalisation of daily life which can free us. For a sixteen years of age to get all that from viewing a play in Golspie in 1973, to comprehend that you can both be captivated and informed which both are satisfying, is what occurs when it stops drizzling.
For those people who work towards an independent Scotland April 2023 has actually certainly been the cruellest month. It has actually definitely drizzled greatly on our cause. The occasions surrounding the SNP, the media reaction to it, the damage being done to democracy in Scotland and how all that will effect the Scottish self-reliance motion, are concerns no-one can truly respond to now. I can almost guarantee that no modern Scottish theatre business will touch any of the above as a topic for a play. Well, not one that will receive any financing that is.
Which is a pity since we require the theatre to work for us now, more than ever, for it is clear that there is something atrophying and decomposing in the organizations of the United Kingdom, as it is currently made up. As journalism enjoy informing us no-one trusts anything any longer and political leaders least of all since they are all alike. They are just in it on their own. This undesirable sharn has actually infected Scotland from Westminster like the effluence in the English rivers and as long as Scotland stays shackled to the UK the worse this rot will end up being. This is not a recent contamination. It has actually been leaking into our social and political water-course for a long time.
There is a propensity in particular areas of the Scottish delegated see whatever as a conspiracy theory (I admit I can be guilty of this) and after that there is the counter argument, from the opposite of the left, who state that to see whatever as a conspiracy is infantile. There is no conspiracy. Ever. However, conspiracy is a simple conclusion to leap to when the truths are kept from the general public. For example, on the 6th April, in 1985, the Glasgow legal representative, anti-nuclear advocate and SNP activist Willie MacRae was discovered dead in his car on a Highland roadside, killed, numerous state, by the British state. The sticky fingers of MI5 were over whatever, was the argument. There was no public query so we will never ever understand the fact. The huge carpet of complicity was lifted and poor Willie MacRae was swept below it, in addition to Hilda Murrell, Doctor David Kelly and who understands who else?
As far as Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon are worried we’ve seen this relocation from MI5 lot of times in Northern Ireland. Media tipped off and Sinn Fein workplaces and homes robbed, loads of cops putting up screens and camping tents and officers boldly seen getting rid of computer systems and bags and boxes of files, individuals apprehended, questioned for hours and after that launched without any charges resulting. It’s pure theatre! Whether anybody linked to the SNP will become charged stays to be seen. No-one understands. But what I do understand is the British state will murder Scottish self-reliance if we let them.
Never mind the information though, “arrested” sounds even more remarkable than “detained” and includes well to the story of what numerous independenistas view as a political stunt by the establishment. Digging up gardens, searching other residential or commercial properties and pulling away a camper van definitely contributes to the drama of what would appear to be a look for proof in a case that’s being exploded by the media to be as huge as it can be. Douglas Ross has actually passed away and gone to Tory paradise.
The examination might go on for a long time, as financial cases, I am notified by buddies with legal understanding, just lead to an official charge if accompanied by substantial proof and sensible potential customers of effective prosecution. The conspiracy runs that the British state are identified that “evidence” will be discovered and if they can prosecute they will. The blood remains in the water. There is going to be a kill. Unfortunately, I would recommend, what the British state remains in threat of killing is democracy in Scotland. That, the conspiracy firmly insists, is the rate the British state wants to spend for the death of Scottish self-reliance.
Meanwhile in conspiracy-free Ukania there’s the on-going £38bn test and trace scandal along with the many other PPE scandals that we’re not hearing much about. I eagerly anticipate the accounts being provided on these. Will the Met be “arresting” Tory ex-ministers Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng, following the discoveries a fortnight ago that both requested for as much as £10,000 a day to advance the interests of a phony South Korean business developed by the campaign group Led by Donkeys? Somehow I question it. Will Boris Johnson be apprehended? Will Rishi Sunak be generated for questioning?
The most recent Westminster corruption is Scott Benton, the MP for Blackpool South, who is the latest Tory to disgrace himself. He has actually been suspended after undercover video footage tape-recorded by press reporters from the Times appeared to reveal him providing to lobby ministers on behalf of betting financiers in exchange for money. The Tories can’t be critics of one-party supremacy in Scotland when they are such a plain example of its destructive effects at Westminster. If the SNP scandal over the missing out on £600k is criminal then let the guilty be penalized to the complete level of the law. I presume there will be no raids on the Tories, no camping tents around their homes, no tape, no media idea offs. Just the soft purring of the contented British state humming its method to oblivion. Meanwhile it continues to rain and Scotland is not a lot being governed as included for what can be drawn out, as the worst headache of the British continues: even if assistance for the SNP drops assistance for Scottish self-reliance is most likely to increase.
On the other hand the Scots are significantly inclined to take a look at the ballet paper and state, “None of the above.” This will be when representative democracy makes the ultimate shift to business representation. £10k seems the going everyday rate for a privatised MP. “Democracy”, as such, will not need to be troubled by an “electorate”. Was that Damien Raab’s rugby boots I felt marking on my head on the playing fields of Dunrobin?
Things break down. That’s a rough analysis of the knowledge included in the 2nd law of thermodynamics: Entropy increases in time. And yet, human societies have actually gotten ever more elaborate, moving from little hunter-gatherer bands to an around the world society with megacities. This paradox is essential to comprehending human history, however historians have actually mainly disregarded it, rather they concentrate on specific, substantial characters and occasions. Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, or whoever. There is no doubt about it – our democracy requires to be updated.
Anyone, any political leader, in Scotland now, who ends up being Minister for Education, Health or Transport (or Minister for Anything) is going to stop working. Failure is all that devolution provides the Scottish Parliament. Doing absolutely nothing, and returning money to the UK Treasury, as Jack McConnell’s Labour Executive carried out in the early 2000’s, is the only success available. The rest is difficult math. Entropy in action. No quantity of extremely smart civil servants can aid with that. The BBC will read out the depressing headings with their typical mix of matter of fact-ness and gloating. And the unpleasant winding and muddling will continue, moving in between the pits and the empty stores, the windmills and the damaged dreams. Money for the bad guys and prison for the truthful. And oh boy, how they will laugh as we draw it up and do as we are telt. How long is this going to go on? Where is the pride, the self regard or the aspiration? How long is it going to drizzle?
So, what occurs when it stops drizzling? When the Sun ultimately comes out what type of Scotland do we wish to see? At 3.00 pm on the 6th of May in Edinburgh the Declaration of Calton Hill will be announced to the world. The very first sentence in the Declaration is,
“We the undersigned declare our support for an independent Scottish republic built on the inalienable principles of liberty, equality, diversity, and solidarity.”
The 6 bottom lines of the Declaration are,
- Refuse to send our residents to unfair wars in other lands
- Banish nuclear weapons of mass damage from our land
- Control using property or land by people, corporations, or federal governments from out-with Scotland’s borders
- Provide sanctuary in our nation for those leaving war, scarcity and persecution
- Protect the natural ecology of Scotland, including our soil, seas, and rivers, and guarantee it benefits all individuals in eternity
- Build a more equivalent society, devoid of hardship, through the redistribution of our huge wealth
To checked out the Declaration of Calton Hill and to sign it go to https://www.caltonhill.scot/
This is what is very important for the Scottish individuals and our long term future, not how £600k was invested in this or that. The Declaration of Calton Hill is not a conspiracy, it is a positive manifesto for what is possible. This is political sunlight. As among the organisers, Allan Armstrong, said here on Bella on 20th of March this year,
“The aim (of the Declaration) is to bring together once more that Rainbow Alliance which achieved so much in 2014. We have no constitutional means to achieve Scottish independence. Our protest on May 6th anticipates the withdrawal of participation in the UK state’s directly imposed institutions and extra-constitutional, non-violent, direct action until we complete Scotland’s Democratic Revolution.”
It’s been a long journey from Golspie to Calton Hill and much rain has actually fallen, and now at last, I believe I can see what requires to take place when it stops drizzling.
©George Gunn 2023
