We couldn’t help noticing this unusually revealing quote from former “Better Together” campaign chief Blair McDougall in today’s Times.
A couple of things leap out.
One is that McDougall apparently sees Scotland and the UK as two separate and fundamentally hostile countries, which is pretty interesting in itself. We can’t say we disagree, but it’s intriguing to hear it coming from someone like him.
(And he can’t mean England, because England doesn’t have its own national anthem, and it would be an incredibly bizarre interpretation of the question anyway.)
It’s also a pretty twisted view of the two songs. “Flower Of Scotland” isn’t so much about being “at war with” another country so much as about repelling an invasion. It’s not even like “La Marseillaise”, an anthem with a similarly defensive theme but a very militaristic air, which glories in wading in the blood of one’s barbarian enemies who “come to slit the throats of our sons” and would “tear their mother’s breast to pieces”.
“Flower Of Scotland” merely sends the invaders home “to think again”. It’s a slow-paced and regretful lament, which even expressly makes the point that the days of violence “are past now, and in the past they must remain”, suggesting only a peaceful resolution to the question of Scottish nationhood. It’s a very odd thing to describe as “dripping with bitterness”.
(It’s also not very much of a surprise that McDougall prefers the tartan-and-shortbread teuchtery of “Scotland The Brave”, skirling on with a load of romanticised expat guff about bagpipes and misty Highland glens and whatnot, from a guy whose two principal residences in his life have been Glasgow and London.)
And what of “God Save The Queen”? We’re constantly told by huffy Unionists that the verse about crushing rebellious Scots was never part of the “official” lyrics, so in what sense is it a song about being “at war with” Scotland? Spuriously attributing it with that meaning may tell us more about Blair McDougall than he’d like us to notice.
Indeed, GSTQ isn’t even a song about a country at all. Almost uniquely for a national anthem, there’s no mention of the UK or Britain or even England anywhere in the words – it’s purely about the personal glorification of the monarch and the abasement of the populace (“long to reign over us”), which is a pretty weird national creed for a self-proclaimed socialist to be signed up to.
Countries choose their anthems as a message to the world, a hopeful ideal of how they want their national character to be perceived, and McDougall has pledged his allegiance to one whose manifesto is “shut up and know your place, oiks”.
But ultimately we must note that when explicitly given a choice of anthems, even Blair McDougall picked a Scottish one rather than a British or even a global one, the vile separatist. (Although it might just be that there have actually been very few positive songs written about Britain, and if he’d gone for “Rule Britannia” it might have forced him to confront something unpleasant.)
Because at the end of the day, readers, even the arch-Brit himself knows that you can’t ride two horses forever, especially when they’re going in different directions. Sooner or later, we all have to pick a side. Maybe Blair will surprise us all yet.
