Michael Fry: Lions can now hold the donkeys to account

IN THE days of the independent Kingdom of the Scots there was a Spanish ambassador, Pedro de Ayala, who reported home in wonder: "They spend all their time in wars, and when there is no war they fight with one another."

At that point, the turn of the 16th century, Scots already had a European reputation for fighting prowess. Quite apart from their strife at home, they were enlisted by the French to set about the English and later in the Thirty Years' War by the Protestant side to hound the Catholics. After the Union of 1707, as the British government sent its Scottish regiments off to imperial wars, they were liable to encounter Scots recruited on the other side, into the armies of Egypt or the Hejaz or Hyderabad.

Arguably the greatest military conflict of all for every nation that took part in it was the First World War. It was a war not just of professional armies, as previous wars had been, but a total war, one that reached down into civil society, into cities, towns and countryside. And it tested them: it changed their lives, it brought them hardship and it took their sons, whom it killed.

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There has never been any reliable official estimate of the number of Scots who fell in that war, because the British government was wary of producing one. Its supreme commander, General Douglas Haig, himself a Scot, convinced himself his Scottish regiments could win the war for him, so he liked to send them over the top first, often to be slaughtered. There are certain unofficial estimates suggesting Scotland suffered the highest rate of casualties of any nation on the allied side. Yet Scotland fought the war through without flinching. If that was the test, Scotland passed it.

It all adds up to a glorious record by any standards, and its effects can be felt down to the present. When the battalions of the Royal Regiment of Scotland reach home from their tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, they can be sure of a warm welcome as they parade through the garrison towns. They may no longer be so strongly attached to particular parts of the country in the way they once were as independent regiments, but the old ties remain strong.

Still, a different attitude can also be detected. This is not so much a result of political change, because the wars that Britain is fighting today are, broadly speaking, backed by the political class: we will get a new government this year, but fight on still. Even so, the soldiers tell us they do not believe they are receiving the support at home they hope for and feel entitled to expect.

The greatest visible change is in the public reaction to casualties. In the past Scots took for granted that in war soldiers get killed. The poignancy of individual tragedies was always sublimated in the greater glory of the national cause and of the victory that rewarded it, since we have usually won our wars. Afghanistan is an exception: imperial Britain lost three wars there and now post-imperial Britain looks like losing another.

Yet that hardly accounts for the novel reluctance to accept that death is inevitable in war. At the Battle of the Somme, Scotland could take hundreds of dead in a single morning and not flag or fail. In Afghanistan more than 200 Britain soldiers have been killed since 2001, 10 per cent of them Scots, so the death rate is minuscule by historic standards.

Of course we grieve over every life lost, but this time round each seems somehow to have struck home harder. While nobody ever thought of inquiring into the circumstances of individual deaths during the First World War, today every single military fatality is investigated by an inquest, on the same terms as a domestic murder or a road accident in the local High Street. At the end a civilian coroner who may never have held a gun passes judgment on a clash that took place thousands of miles away, and sometimes he has been scathing on those he holds responsible for what happened. We may sense a public mood building up that casualties even at a modest level are intolerable, that almost for this reason alone the war should be stopped.

It may be just a matter of the merits of one particular conflict, its apparent pointlessness and the meagre prospects of success. But there could be more to it than that. During the 20th century war and society became intertwined, because the whole of society had to be mobilised to win wars. Anyone who can remember the Second World War will also be able to reflect that British society was, compared with today, completely different before or even after it.

One of the most striking changes is the decline of deference on every hand, but above all popular deference to the ruling class, including a military caste. Nowadays we do not place much confidence in those occupying positions of authority – if anything we mistrust them. Suspicion extends in particular to what is said or done by representatives of the British state. That is one reason why we got a Scottish Parliament: we no longer wanted to rely on voices from Westminster telling us what was good for us.

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In the age of the internet we have also grown used to communication as an interactive process rather than words of wisdom handed down from on high. In earlier times the civilian public was shielded from the horrible realities of war, but now we have no trouble in calling up the blood and the guts on our screens. Our rulers can no longer bamboozle us. They need to find new ways of putting their case across, especially a case for war, and they have not yet managed it.

Certainly the idea that, among other freedoms, we are entitled to freedom of information has taken root. At this moment the Chilcot inquiry is going into the origins of the war in Iraq, if less aggressively than some of us would like. It may not in the end get at the truth, but at least the underlying assumption is that we are entitled to the truth – which may strengthen our resolve to ensure that in future we set up inquiries in such a way that they do get at the truth. This is not something the governments in 1914 or in 1939 ever had to worry about. Nor can Tony Blair have worried much about it in 2002, or else he might have acted differently. At least the Scottish Parliament has from its outset taken freedom of information seriously.

These are all somewhat intangible but big changes, yet on balance they make us freer citizens – and are for that reason welcome. The flipside of the coin is that we have also become harder to lead, in war or anything else. That will be a problem for politicians, but I cannot say I feel much sympathy. In the old Scotland, martial discipline coupled with individual anarchy proved quite a successful combination.