Dancing with the
People
First things first, I want to point you to
the worlds biggest virtual ceilidh and invite you to join in.
You’ll be joining in with notable dignitaries like our very own
Linda Fabiani MSP
http://www.scotland.org/ceilidh/#1112 I haven’t searched for
other MSPs and politicians yet, but I’m sure they’ll all be
lining up to get on there.
Friday
past I had the honour of attending the Showmen's Guild Annual
Luncheon in the Thistle Hotel in
Glasgow, a lovely
occasion, lots of good humour –including a delightful speech
from Conservative MSP Jamie McGregor. His politics may not
be the same as mine (though there’s always hope for a conversion
of even the most ardent Eton-educated unionist Highland laird),
but he’s a well-mannered chiel and gives strong support to
various causes. His speech on Friday had some excellent
humour in it and plenty of compliments for me so he can’t be all
bad. You can see some photographs of the event at
http://scotlandsfairgrounds.fpic.co.uk/c1783897.html
I was
delighted to be invited to the screening of “Rethink
Afghanistan” at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on the Saturday, it’s a
moving film documentary on
Afghanistan and some of the background to
the current conflict, explaining in greater detail some of the
internal politics and pressures of that country. The site
of the film’s producers will offer you some insight into their
take on things -
http://bravenewfilms.org/videos/rethinkafghanistan/
and you can see the actual film at
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ -
completely free of charge. Part of the film covered the
question of whether the country is now a better place for women
than before we invaded – my opinion probably won’t be a surprise
to anyone, especially with the recent alteration of the law to
give men far in Afghanistan the right to beat and starve their
wives if they feel they’re not being provided with enough sex or
food. I think we’ll look back on Afghanistan with some
shame in years to come and we’ll question whether we made
anything better there. 98 of our soldiers have been killed
there this year, 235 in total. There are 9,000 service
personnel in that theatre of war, 9,000 people standing in
harm’s way, 9,000 people who deserve our utmost support and
respect, 9,000 people who are facing another Afghan winter in
our service and another 500 are being lined up to join them.
Our
soldiers deserve all the respect we have for them but the
politicians who sent them there need to say why and they need to
be telling us what the task actually is – the mission isn’t
clear, and they have to be making it clear just exactly what the
plan is for ending that conflict and bringing those troops home.
They deserve nothing less than that. The film is worth
watching, I recommend it, and I hope you watch it.
I left
the Filmhouse and picked up my sons who wanted to go to (I
should have known) the cinema to see 2012 – not a film about the
next local authority elections, this was entertainment – and we
were out in time to share in the nation’s joy as Scotland romped
away with the match against Australia, beating them by a massive
margin of nine points to eight. Worth waiting a couple of
decades for! Bring on the Pumas I say!
Back to work on Monday – more fun, though.
I was at the celebration of
Scotland & Me which was a Year of Homecoming
initiative by the SQA that encouraged the creativity and fired
the imaginations of school pupils the length and breadth of the
country. Artwork, short stories, poems, videos, music –
this country is, quite clearly, full of creative geniuses who
hide quietly in our schools most of the time and only come out
to impress when we give them the encouragement. Fantastic
work, excellent quality, and I hope we’ll be seeing these
youngsters continue to impress in the future.
Chamber
this week was interesting, a debate on whether we should teach
Scottish history and culture in Scottish classrooms. It’s
not a proposal that I could see being opposed in any other
country – “shall we teach our children about their own country?”
– but it was in
Scotland. What kind of politician
doesn’t think that it’s a good idea? I’ll let you judge
for yourselves by reading the debate online on the Official
Report at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor1125-02.htm#Col21479
but the bit you really must read is my speech:
Christina
McKelvie (Central Scotland) (SNP):
There is an awfy
temptation for Scots to ask, "Wha's like us?" and to answer by
saying, "Damn few and they're a' deid." That is the knee-jerk
reaction of a people who have felt disfranchised and have
reacted with a prickly pride.
We can reel off lists of Scots who have
done marvellous things and we are, quite rightly, proud to be
associated with them. What we do not seem to be able to do
easily is place those characters in the period in which they
lived. We have no sense of the nation in which they lived and no
taste of the air that they breathed. Many of us will punt the
greatness of the Scottish enlightenment by quoting
Voltaire, who
said: "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
We will praise
David Hume's "A Treatise
of Human Nature" and argue about whether Adam Smith was a
socialist. However, few of us can place those people in the
stretch of history. We have a pantheon with no walls—an
unfinished monument to mirror the national monument on Calton
Hill.
Surely our duty is to ensure that coming
generations have a context for their heroes, know what social
forces in Dundee helped Mary Slessor to choose her life as a
missionary and understand how difficult it was for Elsie Inglis
to practise medicine and how Mary Fairfax Somerville came to
write influential scientific tomes in the first half of the 19th
century.
Delivering a view of the past that explains
the country that they inherit is essential for a child in any
nation and it is no less so in
Scotland.
Johann
Lamont:
I wonder how Christina McKelvie imagines
that a greater understanding of Elsie Inglis and Mary Slessor
would be gained by a visit to Culloden.
Christina
McKelvie:
The member will know better than I do that
Culloden is just one choice of all the things that children can
visit. My son is going to visit something in Glasgow during the
week, which is subsidised by the local authority, too. Whether
it is coming from the Government or the local authority, it is
all coming from the one pot. It is great learning for our kids.
Delivering a view of the past that explains
the country that they inherit is essential for a child in any
nation and it is no less so in
Scotland. I have repeated that sentence,
because it needs to be repeated. Scottish pupils should be aware
of the Glasgow rent strikes; the radicals who echoed the calls
of the French revolution; how the Church of Scotland made
Scotland the most literate nation in the world; how Scottish
merchants seized the opportunities of empire; and why Scots
cannot walk away gently from the wrongs that were committed in
building and maintaining that empire—they should remember that
Scots, too, were involved in the slave trade and they should
remember, with pride, that they were involved in its abolition.
Margo
MacDonald:
The member has just given a very good
example of history being written by the winners. She said that
Scottish merchants took advantage of the opportunities of
empire, which can be interpreted in two ways. I submit that it
is impossible to have an unbiased view of history.
Christina
McKelvie:
I cannot add anything to that.
Perhaps if there was a better general
understanding of
Scotland's history and our links with
Ireland—viewed with a less jaundiced eye—we might step along the
road to addressing some of the irrational itches of
sectarianism.
When our children can easily access the
treasure troves of art and architecture from Scotland's past and
present, mark our nation's remarkable role in the development of
modern medicine, banking and commerce and be inspired by the
exploration and adventures of Scots who criss-crossed the world,
they will have more chance of becoming bigger people than we
currently imagine.
We have a remarkable country with a
remarkable history. We have made an incredible contribution to
the world and we have an incredible contribution still to make.
We should help
Scotland's children to celebrate that.
There is great strength in a nation that
can look at its own history, mark it well, bask in the reflected
glow of achievement, note its downfalls and learn from all of
it. We do not own the past and we cannot prescribe or narrow it.
That is not our job. We set a framework and we let the teachers
teach. We do not tell them what to teach and we do not check
their jotters. What is taught in Scottish history classes will
be the decision of those who set the classes, those who set the
exams and those who inspect them. Politicians cannot and will
not interfere.
I have some respect for
Murdo Fraser and I
suspect that he wrote his amendment in haste. I imagine that he
did not mean to insult our history teachers by suggesting that
they would promote a political agenda through their teachings. I
am sure that he knows as well as the rest of us do that
Scotland's teachers are professional and dedicated individuals
who will ensure the best possible scholastic results for pupils
and who would resist strongly any attempt by any politician to
interfere with that and with how they teach children in the
classroom.
Likewise, I am sure that
Margaret Smith did not
seek to disparage the good work and professionalism of our
teachers with the empty phrase in her amendment "history should
be taught without political interference".
I am sure that she will make it clear at
the earliest opportunity that she does not suspect that
Scotland's
teachers would impose their political beliefs on their pupils.
I am sure that the framers of all the
amendments—I include Ken Macintosh, of course—know that the
Government reports to Parliament regularly and is scrutinised by
Parliament every sitting week, and particularly at noon on
Thursdays. I look forward to Parliament continuing to follow the
progress and improvements in Scottish education that the
Government is bringing about and I look forward to members
welcoming those improvements.
The subject is important not because
studying history lodges facts, names and dates in young Scots'
minds but because it gives them a panorama of time and a vista
of the nation's experience that can inform their thinking and
their concepts about the nation and the world in which they
live. If memory serves, it was
Ken Macintosh who said that in the chamber
a while back.
History belongs to the nation. [Interruption.]
I am pleased to support the motion.
