On the Ragman's Roll

Allan Massie

John Murray, 18

WITH the 300th anniversary of the Union looming, Allan Massie has set out to write a British book. In fact, he has written a very Scottish one.

This should be of some concern to the unionist cause in Scotland. Massie is, by some distance, the most entertaining, and certainly the best read, of the handful of unionist commentators in Scotland.

Most of the rest are balefully ignorant of the histories of Scotland and England. Massie knows a great deal about both, and therefore, if he finds it difficult to produce a truly British book, then what hope is there for the rest?

Subtitled Six Centuries of Love and Hate Between the Scots and the English, the book is divided into two parts. The first third is a history of Scotland, and to some extent England, for the centuries leading up to the 1707 Union.

This section is unnecessary since it sheds no new light on anything. Presumably, the publishers thought that a potted pre-Union history of Scotland and England would bring the general reader up to speed in preparation for the rest of the book.

Perhaps there is something in this, given the state of history teaching in Scottish (and English) schools. If so, then the history should have been potted into a few pages, since by allowing it to run for 100 or so, it merely emphasises that Massie is unfamiliar with recent historical thought on the wars of independence or even the Jacobite insurrections.

The main point, however, is that it is a history of England's interaction with Scotland over that period. As a Scottish history that is very limited but just about defensible since our relationship with our larger southern neighbour was an abiding preoccupation.

From an English perspective, this is simply daft, since even if we look at history from the restrictive view of dynasties and wars, the English spent more time invading France and Ireland than Scotland and killed more of their own kings than they did of our queens!

One literary vehicle does emerge from the first 100 pages, which serves Massie well for the rest of the book, and that is to attempt an interpretation of history through his reflections on the lives of significant personalities. These people are for the most part literary, which reflects the author's own interests and knowledge.

Thus, the interaction between Scotland and England is seen through vignettes of the lives and thoughts of such characters as Boswell and Johnson, Scott, Buchan and Compton Mackenzie.

Massie has spent an extraordinary time evaluating the family background of these and many lesser lights, and I suspect this genealogical preoccupation gives a clue to why this book was written.

Massie is a 'child of Empire', born in pre-war Singapore, of impeccable Aberdeenshire stock, and is keen to tell us in the introduction that he can trace back five generations "without coming on any who weren't themselves Scottish".

This reminded me of an English Tory MP who told me once that she could trace her ancestors back to before Robert Bruce and was confused when I asked if they had been on the 'Ragman's Roll'. She was even more upset when I delivered my opinion that the newest immigrant from Pakistan with a love of Scotland was more of a patriot than she and her 900-year-old name!

Or again the late Nicholas Fairbairn, who in a liquid Commons rant in the early 1990s pointed to the SNP bench of five declaring that there was not a "genuine Scot" among us - Welsh, Salmond, Ewing, Sillars - and then moved on quickly when he got to the recent, and impeccably Scots named, Labour defector Dick Douglas!

I get the feeling that Massie feels the need to defend his unionism as 'genuinely Scottish'. That much I can understand. What puzzles me is why he believes he has to trace back so many generations to do so.

This weakness comes to the nub late in the book when Massie looks at the impact on 20th-century Scotland of the Tory imperialist John Buchan and the nationalist romantic Compton Mackenzie.

Massie approves of the impeccably Scottish Buchan and glides over his blatant racism and personal opportunism. However, he clearly disapproves of the "invented Scot" Mackenzie, whose devotion to his adopted country may have been hopelessly romantic but was entirely selfless.

However, the worst point about Massie's view is the subtext, which is somehow that Buchan was entitled to his views but Mackenzie was not. In fact, Buchan, Mackenzie and Massie are as entitled to their views on Scotland, whether their ancestors hailed from the East Neuk, Banff and Buchan, or the Punjab.

Massie's greatest hero is, of course, Walter Scott, who he imbues with the superhuman achievement of not just "inventing the Idea of Scotland" but also "inventing, or at least refurbishing, an Idea of England".

All of which is good provocative stuff for a lecture or an essay. It is interesting and entertaining, but it is nothing like true.

Scott, great man though he was, invented tartanry, which allowed anglicised or expatriate Scots a pastiche of nationhood. More recently, tartan has been rescued from Scott's ghetto by fashion design, youth culture and the tartan army, and many Scots of my generation have been only recently reconciled to tartan.

I attended a school dance in my constituency last year. Every lad was sporting tartan of varying degrees of outlandishness. If I had tried that at Linlithgow Academy in the 1970s I would have been beaten up in the toilets!

If one man 'invented' the idea of Scotland then it was Burns not Scott. Burns, however, that most Scottish and internationalist of poets, rates only passing mentions from Massie.

And as for Walter Scott reinventing England?

In the past few years, a number of authors ranging from Jeremy Paxman to Billy Bragg have been on a mission to redefine Englishness. This has been done with a reasonable degree of success but, as far as I remember, none has sought their inspiration from Ivanhoe!

It is the case, of course, that many of England's finest poets and literary figures had a strong Scottish influence. Massie is right, for example, to reflect that Byron in disposition seems more Scottish than English. However, does that make him by definition British?

If so then we will have a problem categorising the equal number of English writers who were as much Irish as English.

Massie writes well, and this is a book well worth reading. He understands some subjects acutely, and not just in literature - for example the reasons for the decline and fall of the Scots Tories. Indeed that passage is so good that one wonders why he has never explained it to them.

However, Massie has many blind spots. He reflects little on the rise of Scottish identity and how much of a role modern Scottish writers have played in that.

Instead, he sees it as an essentially negative response to the decline of Britain and therefore Britishness. He cannot bring himself to see that it might flow from positive and empowering roots.

He therefore doesn't really understand Scottish nationalism.

I will make him the following prediction.

This attempt at a very British book will be read and enjoyed by many more Scots than English and even more by nationalists than unionists.