Don't get fooled again!

 

© Daily Telegraph

Would you buy a used windmill from either of these men?

A Cross for Saint Andrew

 

Fattie & The Bairn; What will we learn from past mistakes?

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;

The Summer of Love seen from afar

The summer of 1967 was also-known-as the Summer of Love. I was at school in the deep sooth; a school that helped shape a few notable individuals. Daniel Kohn-Bendit, also-known-as Danny the Red, had attended briefly around 1964. His moment of youthful activism produced memorable photographs in the Paris Match of June 1968. I remember studying them in the library.

An iconic image from long ago and far away.

Another pupil was incensed by the closure of the pirate radio stations. In September 1967 they persuaded me to make my first political protest; I signed a petition which was duly ignored by the powers-that-be. I did not know then that this young person would go on to spend much of their life in jail. It takes all sorts to make a world.
On a return to the school some years ago I was told that another old-scholar had changed their name. This was, according to the story, to evade the consequences of being involved in one of the small groups that occasionally became news stories in the seventies.
The Jimi Hendrix years began in October 1966 in Evreux, France. They ended with his tragic death in September 1970. Many young people believe that those four years were 'The Sixties'. But the sixties was longer and it had its share of tragic deaths. I don't know if it was grief at the tragedies or disappointment as youthful dreams turned to ash in my mouth but I blame the sixties for all my wrinkles and the uneasy feeling that a better world was possible.
Fifty years ago, in September 1967, Che Guevara was in Bolivia; fighting for his vision of human dignity. "One, two, three ... Lots of Vietnams!".
What went wrong?

An MZ motorcycle smells the flowers, Port Elphinstone, Scotland, August 2017.

Louis Mair

Concrete Group

Louis Mair, June 2011, displayed on Union Terrace Gardens

Sir Concrete Jungle hereby proclaims and decrees that a competition will be held to determine the most profitable way to create a desert in that part of His domains known, in the vulgar tongue, as Union Terrace Gardens. Commoners wishing to enter the aforesaid competition should write their name and the location of their hovel on a £50 note and give it to one of His Coonsillors.

A big bonus is offered for the right scheme.

Sir Concrete

The Big Bonus Society

The old-school-tie it decorates

The flabby necks of deep ingrates.

Gangsters lie and Bankers steal

Their ugly world is not for real.

Class-Z drugs and mortgage debts

Snare the peons in their nets.

Resist the call of siren-scum!

A better day must surely come.

© Louis Mair

April 2011