Why Ruaridh is now paying his union dues

Published on Thursday 11 January 2007 12:01

RUARIDH NICOLL is explaining why, despite the fact that he was brought up on a hill farm in deepest, darkest Sutherland, Edinburgh is where he now calls home. "It's probably for the same reasons as most people here, it's how beautiful it is, it's one of the nicest places in the world to live.

"I live in Stockbridge and I never have to get in the car to go anywhere, everywhere is right there," the 37-year-old novelist continues. "It's the city of Stevenson, of the Edinburgh Review, the Enlightenment... I could go on and on."

"There's even this bar," he says, indicating the wood-panelled interior of the Shore Bar in Leith where we're sitting. "And I have spent so many summer days sitting out there," he nods to the water's edge, which is looking most unenticing on a cold and dreich January day.

It was, according to Ruaridh in a BBC documentary to be broadcast tomorrow, another cold day - albeit in April not January - when one of the most shameful episodes in local history took place, not far from this very spot.

It was 1705 and anti-English feeling was running high as moves towards the Union of the two nations gathered pace. England had introduced the Aliens Act in February, which barred Scots from trading in cattle, coal and linen with the English - at a time when England accounted for 50 per cent of the Scottish export market. Coming on top of poor harvests during the 1690s, it was unsurprising that the move didn't go down too well.

In the Capital, though, it went further than that. As tensions rose, a group of English sailors from the ship The Worcester were imprisoned in the Tollbooth on trumped-up charges of piracy. On that chilly April day mob anger spilled over. Three sailors were dragged from the prison and down to Leith. Gibbets were erected and the innocent men were arbitrarily hanged.

The incident provides the opening scenes to the documentary, Patriot Games - The Making of the Union, which Ruaridh wrote and presents, to mark the Scots Parliament's agreement to the nation's union with England, the 300th anniversary of which takes place on Tuesday. It was the writer and journalist's first foray into television and he found the subject matter fascinating.

"I think I was like everyone else when it comes to the Union. I knew 'such a parcel of rogues in a nation' [the Robert Burns poem which claims the Scots parliament was "bought and sold for English gold"] but I was educated at a time when Scottish history wasn't really taught in schools.

"But they were happy for me to do it as a journey of discovery and short of the Clearances there is no more controversial period in Scottish history."

And probably, for 2007 at least, no other historical period which is more pertinent. The irony of the anniversary falling in the same year as an election where Scots-English relations are a hot topic isn't lost on the former reporter with the Evening News' sister paper, Scotland on Sunday. The likelihood of Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister when the English are questioning the right of Scots to vote on English matters, the surge in the polls for Alex Salmond's brand of nationalism, the anti-Scots feeling during the World Cup from the English...

"It's an astonishing coincidence," says Ruaridh. "And I think all the coincidences together means we will talk about it."

The Nationalists are hoping this tide of questioning over our identity will play in their favour when it comes to the ballot box in May - but if Ruaridh's example is anything to go by, they are likely to be disappointed.

"Like a lot of Scots, I grew up as a nationalist supporter, shaking my fist at England. By the time the programme came around I was less nationalistic," he says. "And after the programme, I was a staunch unionist!" What helped to change his mind was discovering the Burns line about corrupt politicians giving in to English bribery wasn't exactly the whole story.

"You have this picture of these corrupt lot of aristocrats bribed by the English into selling our country. Once you actually start looking at these people, you find they are far more rounded characters. They are just amazing politicians," he enthuses. "To get these two countries that pretty much despised each other into a political union was terrific politics."

Cash was sloshing about, but far less than most people imagine, and used to influence far fewer politicians.

"The real experts who have studied this say there were two or three people who were bribed, like Lord Banff, who was paid just 11 or 12. So it is just ridiculous if you are actually going to feel aggrieved because an aristocrat or two got that much money - you are not taking our country seriously."

He is less than enthusiastic about the role of the Scottish Parliament, but insists: "I have high hopes for the future."

As long as that future includes a continued union with England, a union which he believes, having made the documentary, was brilliantly negotiated by the Scots.

"A lot of the people who originally negotiated the Union kept very important parts of the country's cultural life. And the Union forced us to live in a country with four nations, four independently-minded nations. I think that made us very tolerant, it bred liberal ideas. Now, we, like the English, are very tolerant. I think that's done us really proud over the years."

It's not a fashionable view at the moment - and as the documentary reveals, it wasn't terribly in vogue at the time.

"When Queensberry [the principal pro-union politician] trundled up and down the Royal Mile between the parliament and his townhouse, people would stand in the closes, which were basically gardy loos [where chamber pots were emptied], and pick up pieces of s**t and throw them at him," laughs Ruaridh. Indeed, with the parliament in the Capital, most of the action involving the Union takes place in Edinburgh.

For Ruaridh filming was the chance to see parts of Edinburgh he'd never visited before, like the old parliament hall, now courts, just behind St Giles' Cathedral.

"It's a wonderful place - people should go and see it and not just turn up when they are due in court," he says.

Making the documentary also provided a welcome break from the solitude of novel-writing - a solitude which Ruaridh, who is married to painter Alison Watt, took to extremes while penning his first novel, White Male Heart, published four years ago, when to moved to a cottage in the Wester Ross village of Achnasheen for 13 months. "I moved there because I knew it had a really good pub but I arrived to find it had burned down. There was nothing there."

He also works part-time for the Observer newspaper, spending half his week in London, where he's been able to judge first-hand growing English antipathy.

"There is a huge amount of anti-Scottishness. We have really p****d them off."

Labour's scare-tactics have backfired, he argues, with few realising the powerhouse of London subsidises much of the UK. He hopes, however, that we haven't annoyed the English so much that they'll send us packing.

"We think that by splitting away from England we will protect ourselves from such follies as Iraq in the future, which is true, but we will have no influence. Our politicians have a huge part to play in the world yet now, because we are embarrassed by Iraq, we want to be like Estonia. Or we've got Alex Salmond saying we want to be like Norway. Well, I don't want to be like bloody Norway."

Spoken like a true Scot.

• Patriot Games - The Making of the Union is on tomorrow on BBC2 Scotland from 9pm to 10pm