Alexander Linklater writes:
How could you fail to have an argument about
identity in Scotland – and at a time
like this? A referendum on independence should be the very definition of the
moment to have it.
You'd have thought the Scottish cultural air would be thrumming with an accrued history of intellectual fighting and flyting over who we are, dating back to the unions of crowns and parliaments, through the Enlightenment and into all the scientific and artistic legacies of 19th and 20th-century Scottish culture, as manifested now, at a constitutional crossroads.
But this is a strange time.
The argument about Scottish culture is not being had. The accusation aimed at the Better Together campaign is that it has no positive vision of the UK.
But, by exactly the same token, the yes campaign has little more than economic promises, based on speculation that an independent Scotland could be better off financially.
In this reductive economic standoff, Scots are defined only by geographical residency, our identity dependent on resolving the currency problem, our future pegged on the dubious question of EU membership.
There is lots of angry smoke in the debate, but no real fire.
There was, curiously, more cultural expression during the process of devolution.
Glasgow had been galvanised by its year as European city of culture; Scottish artists ("Scotia Nostra", as Douglas Gordon referred to them in his 1996 Turner prize speech) were seizing their place in a global market; the new parliament in Edinburgh (with its Catalan designer) was being worked up into the capital's most extravagant experiment in modern architecture; Trainspotting (with its Scottish producer and English director) transformed the image of Scottish cinema; the "new Scottish fiction" was gripping publishers from Edinburgh to London.
That was a time of constitutional reorganisation, but now, on the brink of revolution, Scotland's cultural elites seem to have fallen into sterile postures of consensus.
The majority of artists and writers – the ones who are prepared to speak up – are yes voters by default, but not argument.
The minority who disagree remain largely mute, cautious of their reputations, fearful of vilification. The atmosphere is tense, nervous and unimaginative.
The only discernible argument about identity currently to be had is the daft idea that an independent Scotland would become like Scandinavia.
No one who really knows Norway or Sweden (and they are not easy to know) would confuse their discreet, anti-confrontational, technocratic political cultures with our liberal and disputatious – Scottish or British – ones.
But beyond the economics, where is the legendary Scottish dispute?
This may be the first time Billy Connolly has been heard to say that he doesn't have an opinion (recently asked about the referendum, he replied that he had more in common with a welder from Liverpool than a Highlands crofter, but wouldn't be voting in September).
Ian Rankin, despite his detective Rebus being a classically cantankerous character of Scottish fiction, isn't touching the subject.
Cosmopolitan painters such as Callum Innes, Peter Doig or Alison Watt have not been tempted to air their views on traditions in Scottish art.
One former Dr Who, David Tennant, says it's not his business, since he doesn't live in Scotland and the new Doctor can't speak, due to BBC impartiality rules, which is also why no explicit opinion – either way – will emerge from the likes of Andrew Marr, Eddie Mair, Kirsty Wark or James Naughtie.
The BBC, with its Reithian foundations, is a fundamentally Scottish-British institution.
The problem is that the in-or-out binary question bypasses the reality of Scottish culture, which has, historically, lived out a duality.
It is not the state, or geography or ethnicity that defines what it means to be Scottish.
As David Stenhouse writes amusingly in How the Scots Took Over London, the streets of the British capital are paved not with gold, but with a road surface invented in 1816 by John Loudon McAdam.
In the 19th century, Scots, having invented modern city planning in Edinburgh, were designing half the bridges across the Thames.
London is not an English city, but a world city – and never more so than now, in the era of mass migration.
It is Scotland's biggest market and its third most important portal to the world.
A vote for independence in September would not mean separation from England (a matter of cartography that was resolved 1,000 years ago).
It would mean separation from Britain, a country that was created and constituted by Scots at least as much as it was by our partners in the union.
But the Scottish Enlightenment, the diaspora, Scots in the empire, Scottish explorers and scientists and philosophers and inventors – the tartan seams in the British story – have been bleached out of a narrow debate.
Almost every great Scottish writer has struggled with, or been inspired by, their dual identity.
Boswell thrived on his Johnson. Burns wrote poetry to Britain as well as Scotland. Scott gave the name Waverley to the fluctuating loyalties of Jacobite fervour and Georgian settlement. Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde universalised the split psyche.
Scottish creativity sprang from its argumentative, oppositional nature.
Scotland wasn't subsumed by the union; its institutions of law, education and kirk were flintily sharpened against the English. The existential battle for identity fought by Lewis Grassic Gibbon or Alasdair Gray has been won – and the picture has become plural.
Completely different versions of the country have emerged in the hands of Allan Massie or James Kelman, Irvine Welsh or Alexander McCall Smith. But they are the old guard.
Writers, artists, poets, film-makers – even those who desire independence – no longer obsess over national identity.
Contemporary Scottish culture is international cosmopolitan, or personal. Dundee and its gaming culture (home of Grand Theft Auto) is global.
Many Scots feel equally British and Scottish. This is not depressing dilution, it is cultural chemistry.
The most exciting current Scottish film is David Mackenzie's Starred Up. Produced by Gillian Berrie, boss of Scotland's leading, home-grown production company, Sigma, it is the most visceral English prison story ever told.
The best 21st-century work of Scottish theatre so far has been Black Watch. Written by a Scot (Gregory Burke) and directed by an Englishman (John Tiffany), it put the Scottish National Theatre on the international map.
Scottish culture is not defined by the technocratic trade-offs between market and state that are contemporary politics.
The current Scottish government – which, make no mistake, is popular and effective – nevertheless has no record on culture.
Scottish cultural identity is borderless. The British dream is not a confining state, it is a creative and commercial opportunity.
Saying no to separation should mean saying yes to a different constitutional settlement for the UK as a whole.
That is what all the political parties now need on the table. The status quo is not an option.
Enhancement and ratification of the powers of the parliament in Holyrood would allow Scotland to get on with being itself and, with no contradiction at all, to reap the creative potential of a Britishness, which was ours historically and is ours still to make.
You'd have thought the Scottish cultural air would be thrumming with an accrued history of intellectual fighting and flyting over who we are, dating back to the unions of crowns and parliaments, through the Enlightenment and into all the scientific and artistic legacies of 19th and 20th-century Scottish culture, as manifested now, at a constitutional crossroads.
But this is a strange time.
The argument about Scottish culture is not being had. The accusation aimed at the Better Together campaign is that it has no positive vision of the UK.
But, by exactly the same token, the yes campaign has little more than economic promises, based on speculation that an independent Scotland could be better off financially.
In this reductive economic standoff, Scots are defined only by geographical residency, our identity dependent on resolving the currency problem, our future pegged on the dubious question of EU membership.
There is lots of angry smoke in the debate, but no real fire.
There was, curiously, more cultural expression during the process of devolution.
Glasgow had been galvanised by its year as European city of culture; Scottish artists ("Scotia Nostra", as Douglas Gordon referred to them in his 1996 Turner prize speech) were seizing their place in a global market; the new parliament in Edinburgh (with its Catalan designer) was being worked up into the capital's most extravagant experiment in modern architecture; Trainspotting (with its Scottish producer and English director) transformed the image of Scottish cinema; the "new Scottish fiction" was gripping publishers from Edinburgh to London.
That was a time of constitutional reorganisation, but now, on the brink of revolution, Scotland's cultural elites seem to have fallen into sterile postures of consensus.
The majority of artists and writers – the ones who are prepared to speak up – are yes voters by default, but not argument.
The minority who disagree remain largely mute, cautious of their reputations, fearful of vilification. The atmosphere is tense, nervous and unimaginative.
The only discernible argument about identity currently to be had is the daft idea that an independent Scotland would become like Scandinavia.
No one who really knows Norway or Sweden (and they are not easy to know) would confuse their discreet, anti-confrontational, technocratic political cultures with our liberal and disputatious – Scottish or British – ones.
But beyond the economics, where is the legendary Scottish dispute?
This may be the first time Billy Connolly has been heard to say that he doesn't have an opinion (recently asked about the referendum, he replied that he had more in common with a welder from Liverpool than a Highlands crofter, but wouldn't be voting in September).
Ian Rankin, despite his detective Rebus being a classically cantankerous character of Scottish fiction, isn't touching the subject.
Cosmopolitan painters such as Callum Innes, Peter Doig or Alison Watt have not been tempted to air their views on traditions in Scottish art.
One former Dr Who, David Tennant, says it's not his business, since he doesn't live in Scotland and the new Doctor can't speak, due to BBC impartiality rules, which is also why no explicit opinion – either way – will emerge from the likes of Andrew Marr, Eddie Mair, Kirsty Wark or James Naughtie.
The BBC, with its Reithian foundations, is a fundamentally Scottish-British institution.
The problem is that the in-or-out binary question bypasses the reality of Scottish culture, which has, historically, lived out a duality.
It is not the state, or geography or ethnicity that defines what it means to be Scottish.
As David Stenhouse writes amusingly in How the Scots Took Over London, the streets of the British capital are paved not with gold, but with a road surface invented in 1816 by John Loudon McAdam.
In the 19th century, Scots, having invented modern city planning in Edinburgh, were designing half the bridges across the Thames.
London is not an English city, but a world city – and never more so than now, in the era of mass migration.
It is Scotland's biggest market and its third most important portal to the world.
A vote for independence in September would not mean separation from England (a matter of cartography that was resolved 1,000 years ago).
It would mean separation from Britain, a country that was created and constituted by Scots at least as much as it was by our partners in the union.
But the Scottish Enlightenment, the diaspora, Scots in the empire, Scottish explorers and scientists and philosophers and inventors – the tartan seams in the British story – have been bleached out of a narrow debate.
Almost every great Scottish writer has struggled with, or been inspired by, their dual identity.
Boswell thrived on his Johnson. Burns wrote poetry to Britain as well as Scotland. Scott gave the name Waverley to the fluctuating loyalties of Jacobite fervour and Georgian settlement. Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde universalised the split psyche.
Scottish creativity sprang from its argumentative, oppositional nature.
Scotland wasn't subsumed by the union; its institutions of law, education and kirk were flintily sharpened against the English. The existential battle for identity fought by Lewis Grassic Gibbon or Alasdair Gray has been won – and the picture has become plural.
Completely different versions of the country have emerged in the hands of Allan Massie or James Kelman, Irvine Welsh or Alexander McCall Smith. But they are the old guard.
Writers, artists, poets, film-makers – even those who desire independence – no longer obsess over national identity.
Contemporary Scottish culture is international cosmopolitan, or personal. Dundee and its gaming culture (home of Grand Theft Auto) is global.
Many Scots feel equally British and Scottish. This is not depressing dilution, it is cultural chemistry.
The most exciting current Scottish film is David Mackenzie's Starred Up. Produced by Gillian Berrie, boss of Scotland's leading, home-grown production company, Sigma, it is the most visceral English prison story ever told.
The best 21st-century work of Scottish theatre so far has been Black Watch. Written by a Scot (Gregory Burke) and directed by an Englishman (John Tiffany), it put the Scottish National Theatre on the international map.
Scottish culture is not defined by the technocratic trade-offs between market and state that are contemporary politics.
The current Scottish government – which, make no mistake, is popular and effective – nevertheless has no record on culture.
Scottish cultural identity is borderless. The British dream is not a confining state, it is a creative and commercial opportunity.
Saying no to separation should mean saying yes to a different constitutional settlement for the UK as a whole.
That is what all the political parties now need on the table. The status quo is not an option.
Enhancement and ratification of the powers of the parliament in Holyrood would allow Scotland to get on with being itself and, with no contradiction at all, to reap the creative potential of a Britishness, which was ours historically and is ours still to make.
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