In 1976 Alex Harvey sang about The Boston Tea Party.
There was a clear reference to our constitutional aspirations. The 7:84 Theatre
Company were looking at our history from our own perspective. Jack Bruce, the
creative talent in Cream, was back hame in his ain countrie. There was an air
of expectation. To be of lasting value the arts must reflect experience and
challenge the silent majority.
In the grubby world of politics Willie Wolfe and Gordon
Wilson were given a rough ride by the alien press; as you would expect. They
seem to have been genuine leaders of an independence movement that was expected
by many to achieve much.
In Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari the great
travel writer quotes an imperial auxiliary called Uncle V.S.: “Empires do not
lie they simply elide”, or words to that effect. It was during the sixties and
seventies that the Brenglish Empire elided our oilfields out of the territorial
and constitutional jurisdiction that we call Scotland. This loss of sovereignty
does not feature in the stunted and deformed discourse that is tolerated by our
imperial masters.
When artistic endeavour is over-shadowed by imperial
brutality the stories cannot be told in an easily accessible format. Many
critics have compared the stories of The New Testament with the stories
in Josephus’ The Jewish War. They are accounts of the same historical
period, the same places, the same people. The accounts were written in a
totalitarian world that had no tolerance for dissent. They are great literature
but the intersection of The New Testament and The Jewish War is
an empty set. The two accounts seem, on the face of it, to have beamed down
from different star-ships.
If any keen young historians wish to test my hypothesis
on imperial censorship, they might care to research a third commentator on the
same period. Tacitus wrote an account of a ‘Swordsman’ who suffered a
humiliating defeat at the hands of a ‘Farmer’. The characters are better known
as Calgacus and Agricola. To a totalitarian creed of a master-race it is inadmissible
that a farmer should defeat a swordsman. They were clearly of different social
classes. Even if it did happen, a responsible writer would elide the names so
as to restore order and discipline to the world.
Just suppose, o ye historians of this poor little
colony, that Tacitus was writing an allegory, in a way that would be understood
by his contemporaries but would not be rewarded by a trip to the lion’s den.
Just suppose that the events in Agricola took place on the eastern, and
not the western, edge of the empire. Just consider that there are clear
hints of the Emperor Vespasian, the hero of Josephus, in Tacitus’ Agricola.
Can the battlefield for Mons Graupius be located by reference to The Jewish
War?
I can think of only two men of the twentieth century who
may have had something of the prophet in them. I mean no disrespect to The Last
Messenger, may God grant him peace. One of the voices of the twentieth century
whose honour has increased with hindsight is Marcus Garvey. Garvey famously said:
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is
like a tree without roots.”
What should these words mean to the Scots? Our history
begins with the great stone monuments of Orkney. Yet the strange anomaly of
Mons Graupius, a battle without a battlefield, is used by our enemies to skew
the whole historical perspective. If you question Tacitus you might go on to
question Bede. We should be trying to match the written sources to the
archaeological record. Our overseers will continue, for as long as we permit
them, to tell us of defeat, dependence and devolunion.
The other great voice of the twentieth century said:
“The Revolution winnae faa intil yer haan like a ripe aipull. Yi mun mak it
haapen!” Though to be fair to Che Guevara he said it in Spanish. Che’s
revolutionary adventures were a bit of a catalogue of well-intentioned fiascos.
The exception was Fidel and Raul Castro’s well-publicised and well-financed
Cuban Revolution.
© quotefancy
The importance of Che Guevara’s example for us is his
clarity of vision. Despite his privileged background he won the internal
struggle within his own mind before moving on to influence others. Che took the
personal responsibility for plucking his own apple from the tree of knowledge.
“Nothing on airth enduris bot fame”, as they say in Inverurie.
In 1707 we retained control of all the important powers,
levers and structures of a nation-state. The Kirk included social security,
popular entertainment and much more. Our legal system included enforcement of law
and the collection of taxes. The Scottish Exchequer exists in constitutional
law, though it was illegally elided out of the deal by the Brenglish on both
sides of the border. The education system in 1707 even had a couple of its own
M.P.s. It regulated professions and put knowledge to work to defend our customs
and ideals.
By contrast the smoke and the mirrors of devolunion are
supported by all the imperialists, from raging to closet; the imperialists who
suck the soul from our nation. When Norway voted for independence from the
Swedish Empire it was a very poor country. What it had was a belief in itself
and a clear vision of what constitutes a self-reliant community. There was no
half-baked scheme to entrust their gold reserves to the Swedes. There was no
time-share monarch, to be the servant of two masters. The Norwegians voted for
a known constitution and then put in the hard work and sacrifice that builds a
nation.
When the history of our times is considered by a
generation as yet unborn they may well puzzle over Brexit. The sudden
out-pouring of well-financed and carefully-polished lies must surely have had
some purpose? Might it have been that the imperialists feared that
bad-european-regulations widnae thole the protestant succession? The European courts
would have been unlikely to rubber-stamp the blatant anti-Catholicism at the
heart of the Brenglish monarchy. Have they sacrificed the economic security of
the many over the aristocratic obsession with a family of their choice being
closer to God than the rest of us? These ideas have no place in the
constitution of Europe’s oldest nation-state. Just read the written exert from
our oral constitution that is entitled: The Declaration of Arbroath.
Our opportunity to start a new verse of an auld sang
canna be far awa. “Bigg thy hoose upon a rock.” We need to advertise our
nation’s requirement for a monarch; a King, Quine or other gender of Scots.
“Even a great nation may fall, but only a contemptible
one can be destroyed”; Staniswuf Stushits.
Bibliography
Josephus; The Jewish War; 1981; Penguin, London.
Linton, Abbot; The Declaration of Arbroath; 1320;
Arbroath.
Sax, Jamie (ed); The Holy Bible; 160-;
Tacitus; Agricola;
Theroux, Paul; Dark Star Safari;
Zamoyski, Adam; Poland, a history;
