{"id":8764,"date":"2019-07-08T09:26:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T09:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=8764"},"modified":"2019-07-17T14:30:40","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T14:30:40","slug":"children-of-the-devolution-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2019\/07\/children-of-the-devolution-really\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Children of the Devolution’: really?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was twenty years ago today that the Scottish Parliament officially opened. Donald Dewar spoke eloquently, the Queen attended, and there was a small amount of pomp and circumstance in Edinburgh Old Town.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time for reflection and an assessment \u2013 cue Allan Little\u2019s \u2018Children of the Devolution\u2019 shown on the new BBC Scotland channel, and subsequently BBC Scotland in early July. This offers an appraisal of the past twenty years: the establishment of the Parliament, its impact, and how it has changed Scotland, politics and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two parter opened with Little stating: \u2018Twenty years ago our country\nawoke to a new dawn\u2019, before adding: \u2018We are all now children of devolution.\u2019\nThe series has numerous talking heads including many prominent politicians who\nmade their reputation over the past two decades including Nicola Sturgeon, Jack\nMcConnell, Ruth Davidson, Wendy Alexander, Jim Wallace, Anas Sarwar, Andy\nWightman and more. Two of our four living First Ministers \u2013 Alex Salmond and\nHenry McLeish \u2013 are not present, and neither is Tommy Sheridan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are numerous interesting comments from politicians as well as observers. Some are revealing in ways that participants don\u2019t realise with, for example, Lib Dem Jim Wallace talking of the Scotland before the Parliament as \u2018a mature democracy\u2019 which is illuminating given that Scotland was never a fully-fledged democracy pre-devolution. Wendy Alexander references Donald Dewar\u2019s now familiar line of the Parliament at its inception as \u2018a new voice in the land\u2019, but then goes on to give an assessment of each of the five First Ministers and their qualities, calling Jack McConnell \u2018a teacher\u2019 who saw education as key, Alex Salmond \u2018an oil economist\u2019 championing renewables, and Nicola Sturgeon as believing in social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing lives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Where the programmes rise to their best is when they go beyond insider Scotland\nand listens to people whose lives the Parliament was meant to better. One\nexample is revisiting Section 28\/Clause 2a. Twenty years ago this produced a\nnear-cultural war when the then Scottish Executive announced it would abolish\nthe Thatcher inspired clause prohibiting the supposed \u2018promotion\u2019 of\nhomosexuality in schools, resulting in a campaign of opposition, reaction and\nhomophobia, which was subsequently defeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a moving set of testimonies, Little goes to a Motherwell school and\nspeaks to Jim Whannel, Chloe Divers and Jordan Daly. We see Whannel, a lifelong\ncampaigner for LGBT equality, watching footage of himself making the case for\nrepeal twenty years previous when debating in the TV studio with then \u2018Daily\nRecord\u2019 columnist Tom Brown proclaiming homosexual relations as \u2018not being\nequal\u2019 to heterosexual ones. Whannel was calm, rational and unflinching in his\ncase and we all owe a debt of gratitude to him and many like him who stood firm\nfor equality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking now Whannel says of Section 28 then: \u2018There was a feeling [that] you\ncannot mention anything to do with gay or lesbian issues because it\u2019s now\nillegal\u2019 which led to \u2018an environment within which people felt it was\nrespectable to discriminate\u2019. Divers recalls the effect the Clause had when she\nwas a schoolgirl: \u2018When I started to identify as a lesbian there was nothing,\nno support. I did start to be bullied. The school did nothing for me.\u2019 Daly, at\n24, doesn\u2019t remember this history, but comments that \u2018the country had to go\nthrough all that noise and debate\u2019 to come out the other side. This is moving\ntestimony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as interesting is when Little goes to his old school, Stranraer Academy, and meets with pupils, parents and teachers. One pupil says of the Scottish Parliament: \u2018as a concept it\u2019s a really good thing and has done quite a lot of progressive things.\u2019 A teacher offer a more negative take saying that power has been \u2018taken away\u2019 from places like Stranraer, while a parent states that \u2018Stranraer is completely forgotten about\u2019 and that \u2018the most overwhelming thing, if you speak to the people of Stranraer, is feeling cut off. It\u2019s a frightening thing to think if you had a heart attack or you were in labour, you\u2019ve got a 75-mile journey on a road that is shocking.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s it for?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What emerges implicitly from these and other comments \u2013 but is mostly left\nunexplored \u2013 is a set of contradictions and tensions within the devolution\nproject, and between different interpretations of it. This was for some a\nproject to transform our nation and shift power within it, democratising and\ndispersing authority, and empowering a range of voices. But for others it was\nmerely a limited act, to aid better administration, and in the Labour account,\nto continue their dominance and the sending of a pile of MPs southbound to aid\na Westminster Labour Government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scottish Green MSP Andy Wightman talks of the potential of the Parliament when he says: \u2018devolution was a disruption of the status quo\u2019 and expands the possibilities of this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Now suddenly you had constituents and MSPs asking questions in Parliament on education, on land, on the environment: that people for whom life had been quite comfortable \u2013 suddenly needed to wake up and address.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Jim Mitchell, of Edinburgh University, offers a more critical perspective of what has actually occurred:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We need to empower our local communities, citizens and local government. They\u2019ve been disempowered through devolution.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This brings us back to the voices from Stranraer where one of the teachers comments: \u2018We would like to be in a position where we can decide what\u2019s best for us \u2013 the best people to make those decisions are the people in the region here.\u2019 The tensions and power struggles between these two competing forms of devolution are only at best hinted at in Little\u2019s film that tends to think the best of everywhere and to present this recent history in warm, sentimental, inclusive language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insiders v outsiders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is missing is any dynamic between insider and outsider Scotland, or an understanding that politics is about power, contested ideas and different social constituencies. Thus, the ascent of the very idea of the Scottish Parliament and its establishment is presented as if it happened, if not naturally, but smoothly, and almost inevitably. Skated over is any notion of politics as being about profound social forces, coalitions, and arguments, in which people who are not part of insider Scotland became mobilised, engaged and active agents in their own future (the exception to this being the Section 28\/Clause 2a episode).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little\u2019s film portrays the problem with devolution and its official account, which underplays the energy and effort which went into achieving the Parliament. This is no mere historical point about the past, but matters for how the whole past 20 years are understood, and how we see the role of the Parliament now and in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we see our politics as one of inevitable incrementalism and benign progressivism by our elites, then the chasms which divide our society \u2013 on education, health, wealth, land and more \u2013 can be downplayed or treated as natural products of modern life and capitalism.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is after all the dominant story of devolution and modern Scotland: one which likes to stress our centre-left, social democratic aspects but which isn\u2019t that centre-left or social democratic. This story once associated with Labour and has now been taken over by the SNP that \u2013 independence apart \u2013 see Scotland through the same kind of lenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little\u2019s film is telling in that it pays next to no attention to the SNP victory in 2011 and the three year indyref: the biggest exercise in democratic engagement in Scotland\u2019s history, the effects of which we are still living through and whose shockwaves still carry through society and politics to this day. Little and his team will no doubt say the indyref was the subject of a recent BBC Scotland three parter, but that is to ignore the wider implications of that campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feels like a short change of the changes we have gone through, created, pushed, argued, sometimes won and sometimes lost. It is indeed accurately called \u2018Children of the Devolution\u2019 and is the view of us from Holyrood, rather than the country and politics from a wider, richer canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something missing here<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Large swathes of Scotland are passed over without much comment. Not\nsurprisingly there is not even a single reference to the BBC\u2019s role in this,\nand their lamentable record in the indyref that Allan Little commented upon in\nthe indyref series. Radical voices are few and far between: the sole exception\nbeing Green MSP Andy Wightman. Missing is the Scottish Socialist Party or any\nof the energising voices of the indyref. And of course nowhere is there any\nreference to the low turnouts of every devolved election: starting at 58% in\n1999 before dipping below half of all voters, and only \u2018recovering\u2019 to 55.6% in\n2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is almost as if the pre-devolution voices of institutional Scotland who were opposed to or sceptical of the whole enterprise, have gained the most from the whole exercise and critically shaped the official account of our past two decades, get to tell their story here unchecked. Slipping off the schedules are the left-wing, radical, egalitarian voices which argued for a Parliament pre-devolution, and have supported it through and through; instead we get twenty years of Scotland without one trade union voice or representative, or even a single reference to trade unions and unless I missed it not one mention of \u2018austerity\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Mitchell towards the end of the second programme makes the observation that the debates which drive Scottish independence and Brexit are shaped by issues which have no end point irrespective of what we do constitutionally:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No referendum is every going to truly resolve these matters because they\u2019re all about relationships, and that means that whatever happens, these issues, the Scottish Question and the European Question, will always be with us.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is a good point and could have been taken further by the programme\nmakers: all politics including that of the Scottish Parliament \u2013 devolved or\nindependent \u2013 are about relationships and the qualities, trust and values they\nembody. After twenty years of devolution, neither the Parliament or our\npolitics, has put enough time or care into building and nurturing relationships\nacross this land, and particularly to those who need the most support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is all a missed opportunity. I came to this programme well-disposed and\nwanting to like it and say positive things about it. Sadly I found it\nunderwhelming and selective in the tale it told, and perplexing that Little\nthinks this an adequate account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This showcases elite Scotland\u2019s story of how it believes it has the best\ninterests of the country at its heart. That entails believing the self-serving,\nself-preserving mythologies and ideologies of our elites \u2013 that their\ncomplacent slightly progressive values are up to the challenges of our times.\nThey haven\u2019t worked so far pre or post-devolution \u2013 look at our poverty,\ninequality, educational apartheid and health inequalities, while all around\npublic services are being cut back in poor and disadvantaged areas. And they\ncertainly won\u2019t in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The past twenty years have seen people increasingly question this above\naccount \u2013 and an alternative Scotland, filled with drama, disruption and debate\ncome to the fore \u2013 with increasingly traditional institutional authority\nchallenged and in decline. That Scotland of a citizen-led democracy isn\u2019t\nreally one understood by either our political parties, politicians, or\nmainstream media, but it is a story which needs to be told and retold, and one\nof the defining accounts of recent times. After watching this film, even more,\nthat perspective needs to be given voice and championed. Our past twenty years\nand our next twenty are hopefully going to be understood and championed as more\nvibrant, pluralist and contested than this film presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children of the Devolution is now available on BBC iPlayer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First published by Bella Caldedonia on July 1 and reproduced with the author’s permission<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘What is missing is any dynamic between insider and outsider Scotland, or an understanding that politics is about power, contested ideas and different social constituencies.’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[72,708,85],"class_list":["post-8764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-holyrood","tag-indyref-2","tag-scottish-devolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}