Aly Bain’s soaring Shetland fiddle

I’ve been taking photos at Celtic Connections Transatlantic Sessions since 2008, and one of the highlights is the soaring fiddle of Aly Bian. He plays with an ease and grace that makes it all look effortless -  which is genius in itself.

As a child Aly liked the shape of the violin and started lessons at age eleven when he sat on the knee of his teacher. He was a protégé of Tom Anderson and of the passing on the heritage of Shetlands.

 

Eventually he left for Glasgow and where he played radio Glasgow and played little clubs

He uses a driven bow. Aly play a Scandinavian fiddle made by Adolf springer – which is “sweet and more like a voice”.

 

Aly has recorded 11 albums with Phil Cunningham, with whom he continues to tour extensively. In 2023, he has been recording with Eric Clapton at Abbey Road - 

The Transatlantic Sessions – Since 2008, Aly, along with Dubro master Jerry Douglas, has led the ever more popular Transatlantic sessions as the finale of the major winter festival, Glasgow’s Celtic connections. Hosting many iconic musicians as well as popular Scots Gaelic singers, and American country singers.

 

1960s Aly played with several bands and was in great demand – The HUMBELBUMS, MIKE WHELLANS, BOYS of THE LOUGH. 

Sebastian Faulkes worries for the future

 

He is what he is, and we are who we are, because of, among other things, great books.

Faulkes is worried about his future. He worries books, literary books in the tradition of the great writers of the past. But nobody seems to bother to read anymore. 

 

“I know recent graduates in English who’ve read one or two books. And wonder what they did for their three years.” 

 

As a student at Cambridge he read everything. “I thought I needed to read representative samples of George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens, Conrad, Henry James, you know….

At least three or four books by every single one of them. You just did, otherwise I’d have felt completely fraudulent.” 

 

 He accepts that, thanks to the internet, these bookless kids do know a lot of stuff. 

“Films, TV, countries, flags, currencies, but it isn’t the same as you get from reading books. I think their lives are really impoverished by not having read books.”

 

 

The Rise of Ireland - small is Beautiful

Ireland’s population will reach 5.1 million, the highest it has been since the great famine of 1848 – when the British administration allowed food to be exported, when thousands in Ireland were starving. Many emigrated to America then, resulting in the influential American-Irish contingent today, including President Biden. Many also emigrated from the north over to Scotland, in search of a better life in the UK – more stability and better living standards. Twenty years ago Ireland decided for its future to invest in education. 

 

Joining the EU has been transformational for all of Ireland – both north and south. Only 8% of Ireland’s trade is now with the UK, most of its trade is with the EU and the US. Today major global businesses have set up their European headquarters in Dublin - Google, Facebook, IBM, Apple, Pfizer. Dublin is also a main transfer airport. Ireland’s GDP is now at 5%.  Ireland is now setting up a Wealth fund, similar to Norway, of 65 Billion, to protect for the future. 

 

Our own personal experience defines us and shapes our attitudes to the policies and politics of today. its with a sense of dismay I read of Ireland’s success, while happy for the Republic of Ireland and our relatives still living over there, I feel sad and regretful for Scotland. I loved our visit to Dublin a few years back – our singing tour guide, the impressive writers museum, the historic Trinity university and book of Kells. Sadly my last memory of Belfast and County Down, is one of military checkpoints, hovering helicopters and heavy overcast clouds. I hope to travel over soon enough and find a more prosperous and settled north. I read that one of the main reasons for sectarian problems there is poverty. 

 

Ireland was partitioned in 1921, to allow for the setting up of the independent Irish Republic. I have an old black and white photo of my grandfather who was captain of the Ards football team and won a few caps for the Irish football team, before partition (dated 1909 I believe) So its within living memory not so long ago. My parents left the north to settle in Edinburgh and my husband’s father also left the south too for Scotland. 

 

We moved to America for a decade after the depressing debacle of the 1979 referendum for a Scottish parliament. Britain’s joining the EU brought much needed economic stability and prosperity, and we returned to Scotland. However the British establishment/ state felt threatened by new EU laws over transparency over tax havens. Nigel Farage was put on the BBC Question Time week after week to persuade the undecided on the merits of leaving the EU – take back control meant us all being richer, our NHS being well funded – instead we get reduced trade and less funding. 

 

This year we had King Charles coronation and a concert celebrating the work of those “who serve” – the carers, the teachers, the nurses, and doctors, social workers etc. During the pandemic we all clapped for them but Britain cannot go on offering those who serve mere crumbs, when what these dedicated workers need is decent pay for their hours of hard work. Most voters want investment in our services (health, education, energy) and not in weapons of mass destruction. 

 

Most of us have now travelled far more than our parents generation, and can see clearly there are other options available to us, than a failed British model. Many of us have known for decades that things are wrong in the UK – with declining living standards, the young unable to buy their own homes. While many ignore these serious problems, they should and could be fixed. As a teenager I spent two weeks in Imatra Finland, even then I wondered where the slums were – everything was very clean and the air fresh with the smell of those very tall pine trees. Most families enjoyed their weekend retreats. And in my time living in America I saw that each state had totally different identity, institutions, laws, trade, regulations, and most decisions are made at local level (such as taxes for schools). That’s not to say there are many problems in America – one being lax laws on pollution, another the way healthcare is delivered. 

 

I was devastated with Brexit and Scotland’s enforced exit from Europe, when the majority of Scots support being inside the EU. Sadly the realities for Scotland are that we have a Scottish Parliament which is essentially the construct of Westminster and controlled and constrained by Westminster policies. QC Joanna cherry tells us Scotland does have the right of self determination under the UN charter. In Scotland historically the people sovereignty outweighs the sovereignty of Westminster – is this true?.

 

The UK government controls our economy and imposes its will, austerity policies and Brexit on Scotland.  During the Brexit debates the profound issues of our island nations were not even considered by the English/ British people. I don’t know I understand why Scotland doesn’t have the right to self determination. But I know independence needs to be ‘taken’ with both arms out stretched – we can’t simply ask or request to be free!

 

Now the Tories are attempting to constraint devolution further, rather than allow Scotsself-determination.

Tom Nairn why Scotland missed the European national revival 1800s

 

 

Tom Nairn why Scotland missed the European national revival 1800s

 

Scotland’s greatest political theorist of the modern times. 

Tom Nairn’s brilliant Break Up of Britain (1977), is one of the best reads on how and why the archaic institutions of the British state and its pre-democracy are failing us. How Scotland lost its way and its literary voice over the 1800s and of the fake tartanry of Walters Scott’s novels, of a Scotland that’s lost and can never return - “the heart regrets, but never the head.” Of the destructive and false nature of the Labour party. 

 

He writes on why Scottish nationalism is different to the rest of Europe. 

“All I’m arguing for is nations, minus the dratted “ism”; democratic natural, independent, diverse, ordinary, even boring rather than the museum pieces, or dictatorship or hustlers like Blair of Berlusconi.” Tom Nairn, Free worlds End, opendemocracy, Dec 4^th 2004. 

 

Nairn writes of the misfit of the British state to the modern world and not from the express of romantic tartanry, which the author excoriates – and the centrality of the nation in political change. 

That the Scottish Enlightenment was very much a Tory project. While Scotland prospered during the 1800s with manufacturing, its literary voice became bereft. He sees Walter Scott’s work of a mythical Scotland and Scots heroes, as very much glorifying a past that was gone and to be forgotten. Scotland became north Britain. While Scott’s romantic and mythical novels were highly successful across the world. 

**Those Myths of Blood and spirit, such as Jacobites, Rob Roy, Robert the Bruce.

Nationalism, Nairn argues is always both good and bad. ’ And originated from that derived in – the impossibility of escape from the uneven development of capitalism.’ Nationalism is not a question of simple identity, but rather of something more – a catalyst. Nearly all modern nations have a myth – a key to their nationalism and regeneration. But not England… :with an astonishing resistance of a fossilised and incompetent political order.  

“England’s peculiar form of nationalism  hopelessly stultifying inheritance of the state.…The main character of English history since 1688 “of which English ideology most proud is, her conditional and parliamentary revolution. “

“the mobilising myth of nationalism is an idea of the people … an emotive notion anchored in popular experience of love” – the revolution, war of liberation.”

 

He writes, “What counts is later mass beliefs. These are amplified into an inheritance, broadcast in ballads, written into documentary history text-books, novelized, sermonised and institutionalized into street-names and statues. From the process there derives an always latent conviction of popular will and capacity. That the people could always do it again.” 

 

**By contrast in Europe 1800s, nationalism took hold with the demise of empires, and the rise of nation states. “Only one country “stepped over before the Europe of 1800s – Scotland politics and culture was decisively and permanently altered by the great awaking of nationalist consciousness – Scotland or north Britain …due to the uneven development of capitalism. “

 

“After the black the unspeakable 17^th century was 1688 which marked the real dawn of Scotland, after the dark bloodshed years of religious conflicts across Europe. – William Robertson, in his book History of Scotland. When the Scottish bourgeoisie exploited the results of the English revolution. Scotland progressed from fortified castles and witch burning, to Edinburgh new town and Adam Smith in only a generation:”

Highlander Adam Fergusson, saw this contrast around him. “The Highlands were under-developed and didn’t have pre-requisite for nationalist existence. The Highland life was destroyed after 1745. The Scottish Enlightenment ended early 1800s. The Scottish literary tradition paused 1825 – 1860. Instead there was the Industrial Scotland of Glasgow-Edinburgh- Dundee – engineering, shipbuilding and iron stone. 

Scotland reverted to being a province in the 1800s Victorian times, while prosperous and imperial.  Why – because of the absence of political nationalism and a literary voice. The Scottish bourgeoisies pre-possessed the country’s distinctive and proto-national features – they believed in a universal and enlightened civilization .Therefore Scotland remained stuck betwixt and between - too much a nation to be a mere province, yet it could not develop into a nation-state on the basis either via nationalism. 

Nationalism, Nairn argues is always both good and bad. ’ And originated from that derived in – the impossibility of escape from the uneven development of capitalism.’

There is a duty to progressive England to positively urge Scotland onto independence in Europe.

England-Britain where, perhaps because Westminster no longer has a genuine interior life that links to public self-belief, almost everything that is political is unauthentic.

 

”national-democratic character of the need our self-government to ensure meaning on self-belief.”

Nairns approach is both international and rooted in Scotland and he wrote for the new left review London. He explores the nature of nationalism. In UK more confused by the overlay of British-ness, a nationalism without a nation. His case of Scottish independence advocated becoming LIKE other countries. The self-abasement of the union.

A Future???   A British isles or federation, confederation or modernised multi-national states.’

**DONATE to the conference to celebrate the work of Tom Nairn, organised by Peter McColl (Scottish Greens) , Janice Maxwell (co-editor), Pat Kane, Joyce Macmillan, Anthony Barnett (English democracy activist)

 

His most famous BOOK Tom Nairn’s brilliant The Break up of Britain 1977, is well worth reading and one of the best reads on the archaic nature of the British states’ pre-democracy. https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23475146.impact-tom-nairn-great-let-slip-quietly-away/

The most influential book on British politics to be published in the last half century,”  writes Anthony Burnett