This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
I’ve lost count of the number of historians and educators I’ve interviewed for The Herald who are dismayed at just how poorly Scotland understands its own past when it comes to empire.
Collectively, the brightest minds in our best universities agree that Scotland was not a victim of empire, but quite simply an enthusiastic ‘junior partner’ – that’s the phrase repeated most often. England was the big boy, but we were there happily tagging along.
And it wasn’t just rich and powerful Scots, it was ordinary Scots too. Middle-class Scottish men were often the backbone of the empire, as the high level of their education – when Scottish education was still something to boast about – made them perfect engineers and administrators.
They also made up the bourgeois class back home trading in the colonial goods which made cities like Glasgow boom.
Working-class Scots did the grunt work of empire – but it was better than labouring in factories or fields. Empire offered working-class Scots the chance to make their fortune.
Frankly, we were up to our armpits in empire, and inevitably all the unpleasant stuff that went along with colonisation: namely, killing and exploitation.
That’s just a matter of fact. Like it or loathe it, support it or revile it, Scotland and empire go together like peas and carrots, hugs and kisses, Red Coats and rifles.
However some people – indeed many people – don’t respect the collective research of Scotland’s historians on the matter of empire. They think they know better. This is the era of Donald Trump and post-fact, post-truth, post-reality after all.
Are we not blessed that this is the age when ‘random dude from the internet’ can tell professors of epidemiology and climate scientists that they’re idiots? ‘Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive’, as Wordsworth wrote.
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YouGov has just brought out a survey of adults in Scotland that should bring a tear of joy to the eyes of all the random dudes and dudettes on the internet; all those ‘truth-seekers’ out there, trying to discover if the Earth really is flat, or if Alfred Hitchcock filmed the moon landings.
Here’s one horrendous YouGov fact: most Scots believe that their country was a ‘subject’ of, rather than ‘partner’ in, the British empire.
Of all Scots surveyed, 40% said Scotland was a “subject”, 31% didn’t know; and 29% guessed right, that Scotland was a “partner”.
Bad news for the Yes movement, though. When split on voting lines, the pro-indy camp embraces idiocy much more than unionists.
Of those who voted Yes in 2014, 55% say Scotland was ‘subject’, 26% don’t know, and just 20% said ‘partner’. With No voters, 32% said ‘subject’, 31% didn’t know, and 38% said ‘partner’.
Of Tory, Labour and SNP voters, it’s SNP voters who are the majority thickies: 60% believe Scotland was a ‘subject’ of empire, compared to 35% for Labour and 27% for the Conservatives.
Ironically, when asked how much they knew about Scotland’s role in empire, 40% of those who said they knew “not very much/nothing at all” still opted to believe that we were ‘subject’ to empire and not a ‘partner’ in empire.
To add a creepy, weird flavour to the research, 27% of Yes voters said they “would have liked Scotland to have its own empire at the same time as other European nations”. That figure was 18% for all Scots and 10% for No voters.
This is troubling material. It raises serious questions about the teaching of history in schools. What’s going wrong? It cannot be stressed enough that any nation which does not understand its past, cannot understand its present, or make the right decisions about its future.
I’m a moderate supporter of independence, but I find these figures deeply embarrassing when it comes to the hinterland of many of those in the Yes movement.
I know why I would prefer Scotland to be independent, but for those Yes voters who don’t understand empire, we must wonder what exactly is providing grist to their intellectual and political mill.
There’s something profoundly empty about a nation in which so many know so little about the past. How can you be attuned to your own culture – the reality of your own culture – if you operate on myths and misconceptions?
We should be chastened, and fearful of this. Scotland isn’t immune to populism. An ignorant populace is easy meat for the demagogue.
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It doesn’t take a great flight of fancy to see how some malevolent Trumpian politician could whip up all sorts of mischief among an electorate so disconnected from the past and the truth.
For those Scots who want to stick to their view that this country was a victim of empire, rather than willing junior partner, I guess we should simply wish them well and cease the chit-chat. They have no interest in our best historians, or what has been established as truth.
They’re unreachable intellectually, and frankly bothering with such folk in this day and age is quite literally a waste of your remaining life. Let them continue in whatever benighted world they currently inhabit.
Attention should rather be turned to the young and to schools. The teaching of history needs fixed, and fixed fast.
Among the very worst sins any government can commit is starving the young of education. When it comes to one of the most important periods of our past – empire – that is precisely what is happening.
Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
