05.12.1996

Romancing the stone

Pantomime season begins at the end of November. But it started on a grand scale in Edinburgh last week. Michael Forsyth starred as the country lad who manages to take on the power of the English giant and reclaim the magical stone, bring it back to his people and thus ensure they all live happily ever after. There was even a walk-on part for the real-life Duke of York. He marched to the top of the castle hill and marched all the way down again without saying a word, to show that the giant was really sorry and would not pinch magical stones that did not belong to him ever again.

Forsyth dressed up in a kilt especially for the occasion and proclaimed that the union was safe and secure now that the people had their slab of sandstone to keep them happy. Only in Never-Never Land, Michael! The audience did not even bother to hiss or boo - total indifference to this grotesque charade.

People in Scotland are interested in questions relating to the real world - unemployment, poverty, the right of nations to self-determination, the nature of democracy, the role of an archaic institution like the monarchy - as we approach the millennium.

History is of course important to people, as are symbols, but for too long the ruling class of this country has told us what our culture should be. Our sense of identity has been shaped through institutions of the state determined to keep the working class well and truly in its place.

For generations of school children, history was the stories of English kings and queens with all the juicy and interesting bits cut out. In Scotland now we get Scottish history all about the Scottish kings and queens fighting against their duplicitous English neighbours, but again with all the real good bits censored.

A real sense of how the world has been shaped and changed by struggles over the centuries is denied to our children. They must seek out the other Scottish, English and Welsh cultures themselves. They must tear through the lies and the conditioning to find out about the real movements and real heroes who fought against oppression and tyranny. We are now witnessing the feeble attempts of the Tory establishment, fully aided and abetted by Labour (who wish they had thought of the idea first), to stem the nationalist tide in Scotland by telling us that this stone matters and is significant to our cultural identity and sense of Scottishness.

The national question in Scotland pervades all other issues and concerns. Socialists in England and Wales must make it a priority on their political agendas. Farcical gestures like the return of the stone will not defeat nationalism. It only strengthens the nationalists’ hand. Only when socialists throughout Britain demand the democratic right for the people of Scotland to self-determination and actually lead that struggle can we take this democratic demand out of the nationalists’ grasp.

Mary Ward