Suppression of Scottish Culture - Writers and Artists

Robert Burns statue bottom Leith walk

A recent tv program documented Burns success in American. There are 15 Statues of Burns there, more than to any other writer or musician. Yet in Scotland’s capital, which is covered in unionist statues along its Hanoverian new town streets there is one statue hidden away down the bottom of Leith walk. I was over for the Edinburgh festival and noticed all the George St statues, shockingly there is little on Scotland’s most famous son. 
This happened to the world’s greatest poet who was dismissed as simply a ‘heaven taught ploughman poet’ – when in fact he knew five languages and was a ferocious reader of the classics, philosophers and of the Scottish enlightenment. 

There has been devious, underhand, manipulative moves - not only to ignore the Scottish contributions to the world of the arts, writing, history, and science -.but to whitewash them out of history by those who support the Unionist establishment, the Anglicised Scots of all things English, who see their future in a House of Lords!

**As an example in 1854 the Irish poet Oscar Wilde was born and his mother named him - Oscar Fingal Ossian - ‘Isn’t that grand, misty and Ossianic” she said - yet today who has heard of James MacPherson's Ossian poems? More recently the 1980s there were moves by the English controlled Arts council to close the Scottish National portrait gallery and ignore Scottish art, which was strongly opposed, and thankfully has instead been refurbished and is flourishing today.

Oscar Wilde

This happened in Scotland’s schools where practically no Scottish history was taught until recently – nothing on the Scottish enlightenment, nothing on the great inventions, nothing of great Scottish writers, nothing of the medical inventions.

What I did learn was of Tudor England and of English writers such as Shakespeare, Wilfred Owen and some American writers. My only lessons in Scottish history were a couple of Burns songs with the Primary schools choir – Ca the Knowes, Comin Through the Rye. I was hooked. I feel angry that at school and college in Edinburgh, I learnt of French, American and English writers – but nothing on the great Scottish writers! Hopefully today with Scottish studies at our universities, this has improved in our schools too.

We need to ask - Why have we Scots forgotten? The idea has been to suppress the subordinate cultures such as Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Writers likes Burns and others fought against this in the years after the forced union. I was reading of the origins of Romantic poetry after I picked up a book at the National portrait gallery London on Romantic poets – of the Ossian poems of James MacPherson (read by Napoleon and worldwide), Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Walter Scott, and of course the unparalleled Robert Burns - there was no mention - the international success of Scottish writers has been suppressed.

A few years ago my son graduated at the Royal college of Surgeons Edinburgh, where I was surprised to learn that we have the oldest centre for medicine in the world! There have also been many great Scottish scientific and medical innovations.

Artist and teacher Alexander Moffat and poet and lecturer Alan Raich, write in their informed book, Arts of Independence –“In most countries in their national galleries, half are devote to International Art and the other half to the Art of that nation itself." This is not the case in Scotland where Glasgow artists have been neglected too, as recently as the 1980s and they had to go to New York for recognition.  

I sat beside an Irish woman at a Celtic Connections concert once and I mentioned the wonderful Irish Writers museum in Dublin and by contrast  the tiny Scottish writers museum in Lady Stairs Close. She wondered, perhaps there are only a few great Scottish writers and she may well wonder….where are they and how are they remembered?

“Scots suffer from “virtual universal historical illiteracy’, says historian Tom Devine, “ perhaps that’s why they’ve struggled to engage with the Referendum campaign." 

I believe it is not only very important, but also time we honoured our great Bard, with a statue of him in St Andrews square (and not the other forgotten tyrant Dundas).

And that we also honoured Fergusson (Burn’s muse), Allan Ramsay and the many recent great Scottish writers along with the manygreatrecent authors with a decent Scottish writers museum.

Nationalism understandings matters – it matters to know and understand our roots, heritage and the stories that inform our nation. To understand the places and streets we walk upon. And not in an exclusive way but an inclusive way.

Hugh MacDiarmid

***The great Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid wrote, “To be truly international, you have to be national to begin with, to see the entire Scotland – and not an Anglo-centric or Anglo-American perspective that dominated media and 20^th century cultural analysis.“

“The idea that national self-determination can fuse and ignite art, safeguard its provision, be the ground from which self-knowledge, love of others and the optimism of curiosity grows.”

Edinburgh festivals August!

I am looking forward to another great Edinburgh festival  and Fringe - and all the variety, colour, creativity, fun, (comedy, dance, theatre, music, books, more) and inspiration it brings! The weird and wonderful and the celebration of all the arts and culture.

Main venues – The Pleasance, Traverse, Gilded Balloon, Assembly Rooms, 

Each August I visit Edinburgh festival and I’m always amazed how my hometown is both strange and familiar to me. While most of my time is at the EIBF (edinburgh International book festival), I like to make excursions down the Royal mile and to venture through the packed crowds and savour the vibrant atmosphere of the many players performing the great variety of shows to be found here.

It is weird and wonderful, escapist and real, extreme, frivolous and serene.

I enjoy to venture off the main routes and I eat at least once at Bilbos on the corner of Chambers street.

I try to make a time out to shill, to regroup, recharge and re-collect.  And everything in-between.

I take the walk from the Gilded Balloon near the university, down along Forrest Road past the folk bar Sandy Bells, along the Bridges and the national library and then down the busy Mound, on along George street past the statues of Hanoverian kings – and eventually to the reflective hub for those who enjoy books at EIBF.  I also make time for a couple of ART exhibitions and several shows.

I grew up here and never realised how BIG the festival was worldwide! Some favourite photos from Edinburghfestival 2015! TICKETS available at - https://www.edfringe.com

WB Yeats: Revolution of the mind

WB Yeats 

Revolution of the mind

Songs and imagining the immigration myths - There is no free state without Yeats.  Ireland does not exist without the Poet.

Excellent TV program recently about the Irish poet WB Yeats narrated by Bob Geldof.

Yeats became the Irish National Poet. He looked at the old myths and stories and wanted to write of the spirit and voice of Ireland. He had a vision of a pluralistic, tolerant Ireland that prevails today. 

He was a Protestant born in Dublin.  His father was  a barrister and his mother’s family were from Sligo Ireland which they visited often and where he learned of the myths and magic tales from the servants.

He later lived in London where he Oscar Wilde and other writers and poets. There he also met his muse, Maude Gonne, who was a revolutionary for a free Ireland.

He believed in the arts, poetry and in the sovereignty of intellect and the mind.

His work was about the celebration of pro Ireland NOT what Ireland is against and to celebrate Irishness – rather than oppose England.

He wrote “No fine nation without literature and no fine literature without nationality.”

           

He dreamed of a modern, tolerant nation that was open and pluralistic .  He wanted to tear down the idols of the market place. And he knew that nations are not about lines – and that every people need their myths.

Yeats gave the Irish ‘who they were’ before the endless fighting. Yeats elevated the old heroes – political expression of a people. – Pens not guns.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/yeatsbobgeldof

Meanwhile in Scotland in 1780 a Robert Burnes, 

also wrote of the old stories and collected the old songs around Scotland, from the borders to the highlands. He too became the core and poetic voice of a true and honest Scottish voice. 

In 1920s after WW1 in Montrose, as part of a Scottish Renaissance there, another poet Hugh MacDiarmid took up this mantel again and he too wrote in both Scots and English – drawing on the past stories and imagining the Scotland of the future.  He was one of the visionary poets that began the Scottish national civic movement.

Posh Culture

Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

Once the regenerating resurgence of the 60s and 70s social mobility meant a vibrant and energizing arts creativity. There was a wealth of working class musicians who listened to American blues artists and realized that anyone might aspire to pick up a guitar and play rock and roll. 

Sadly this is not so today. I wondered a few years back over more recent UK bands that hailed from middle class and upper middle class backgrounds - such as Mumford, Coldplay and others - have been squeezing out those young people not so favoured.  

It appears I am not alone thinking these thoughts. Scottish actress Elaine C Smith writing in the Sunday Herald, “Does it matter if UK culture is increasingly dominated by a privately educated elite? You bet it does.”

‘there is no doubt that the old guard are back in charge, with a wealthy, privileged, white, male, privately educated elite dominating our arts, film and TV. The big problem is that for young people today there are few opportunities if you attend a state school

I lived in the US for ten years where I noticed that the tv soaps were never about any divisive 'them and us' class system. Today in the UK we have either posh TV soaps such as Downton Abbey  -  or working class soaps like Eastenders. 

Notably recently several of the new younger actors are from privileged backgrounds, such as - 

Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddi Redmayne, Domimic West.

We have Oxbridge graduates coming up to Scotland to run The Scottish National theatre and Creative Scotland, as well as other major cultural events here, who don’t have grounding in what Scotland is about. In fact a Scot has never run these major Scottish creative bodies (to my great surprise!). I don’t suspect that France would wish to have Germans or Americans running their culture!

Question remains – who is in charge of our arts – universities, galleries, theatre companies, festivals, opera, ballet and so on. And do we need outsiders telling us they know better how to develop our culture?

And no, this is not about the politics of envy, as James Blunt suggested, but rather that this stifles and misrepresents culture. This is also about providing for cultural diversity.

Scottish actor James McAvoy expresses his concern: "As soon as you get one tiny pocket of society creating all the arts, or culture starts to become representative not of everybody, but of one tiny part, and that's not fair to begin with, but it's also damaging for society."

Mumford

Benedict Cumberbatch attended boarding school Brambletye School

Eddi Redmayne attended Eton.

Domimic West also attended Eton and Trinity college. 
Chris Martin boarded at Sherborne School, a boys' independent school Dorset where he met future Coldplay manager Phil Harvey.

Mumford attended private school King’s College School Wimbledon.

James Blunt was educated at private school Harrow.

There are around 2,500 independent schools in the UK, which educate around 615,000 children, being some 7 per cent of all British children and 18 per cent of pupils over the age of 16. yet those from independent schools dominate at Oxford, Cambridge, government, and other leading roles. A big part of this is confidence and networking.