And the Land Lay Still

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It was not politics that was the cause of this huge shift in public opinion and political intention: if it had been, the politicians in favour of a ‘yes’ vote [in the 1997 referendum on devolution] would not have waited so nervously for the outcome, fearful of a repeat of the inconclusive vote of 1979. Something more profound was the cause of the enormous shift in Scottish sentiment that brought about the devolved parliament between 1979 and 1997 and that cause, I want to suggest, was the transformation in Scotland’s national self-perception brought about by a profound reorientation in the value of its culture. Between 1979 and 1997 Scotland underwent a cultural revolution and it was that cultural revolution, rather than the decisions of the political parties, that was the effective cause of the political outcome in the 1997 referendum. ( Craig 2014, 5) Full of gritty fictional characters, intertwined with real people and events from history, the novel explains better than any history book how Scotland became what she is today.

Robertson, of course, cleverly has some of these stories crossing one another, with people bumping into each other and then not meeting again for many years, or meeting in ways you might not suspect. But, while their individual stories are certainly interesting and do show up the complicated nature of politics in Scotland, we are asked to sympathise with a variety of disparate characters and, inevitably, the most interesting ones tend to be the less than pleasant ones, namely the violent thug and the foot fetish Tory. Did Robertson intend this? I suspect not, though this may just be my perverse nature and other readers may come to love the characters Robertson wants us to love. Nevertheless, it is fascinating account of Scottish history in the second half of the twentieth century, even if not entirely successful. Publishing history The novel was enjoyed by everyone in the group - which is no mean feat as there are usually lots of different opinions around the room and few books gain a unanimous accolade! The stories we follow are mainly of those that are not too well-off. Apart from Michael Pentreich, we follow the stories of a couple who have two sons who follow very different paths, one a gentle left-winger, another a violent thug, the friend of the man of the couple who, one day, walks out on his wife and daughter without explanation and whom we meet early on (without being aware of it). We follow the story of the posh Tory M.P. who spends much of his time fighting with his wife (often physically but she is an equal match for him) and squandering his money, and their three children, two of whom do well and make money and one of whom, the daughter, drops out. The journalist, daughter of a generally absent father, the woman who keeps a sort of literary/political salon and the reformed thug who may or may not have killed William McRae also feature. The most interesting, perhaps, is the tale of James Bond (it really is his name but he changes it to Peter Bond later on, for obvious reasons), who really is a spy. He is recruited at a low level and remains at a low level, working in London However, he is later sent to Scotland, where he spies on the Scottish nationalist movement, as the authorities are worried it might turn into another Ireland, though Bond does not believe that that is even vaguely likely. The sporadic violence is both amateur and ineffectual. This is the culturalist case at its strongest (perhaps slightly needled by revisionist commentary from critics including Alex Thomson and myself), and it features strongly in And the Land Lay Still. One passing irony is that ‘cultural revolution’ should figure as the inspiration of a reformist political project ‘of a strikingly conservative character’, in the words of Vernon Bogdanor, whose core purpose is to ‘renegotiate the terms of the Union so as to make them more palatable to Scottish opinion in the conditions of the late twentieth century’ ( Bogdanor 2001, 119). But this is to view devolution from the centre, as an exercise in containment – even appeasement – rather than peripheral empowerment. Devolution looks very different viewed from Whitehall as compared to the literary pubs of Edinburgh, one key reason Scottish writers and cultural activists have been able to narrate the process in their own image, on terms that arguably inflate their political influence beyond the urban cognoscenti. 4 Comments ranged from how much readers enjoyed the fact that all the story strands wove together so satisfyingly at the end, to one lady who admitted that, being English, not only had she gained an interesting slant on recent history as an “outsider”, but she had also learned new Scots words she had never heard before.Written by Scottish author Martin MacInnes, In Ascension is a literary sci-fi epic that has the potential to change the way you think and feel about the world around you, about what we are, where we came from, and where we might go. Alongside the recovery and ‘filling-in’ of Scottish cultural identity were several literary interventions which urged caution about national tradition and pre-given modes of belonging. At the 2014 workshop, critic Eleanor Bell surveyed small experimental magazines of the 1960s including New Saltire and Scottish International. These magazines contain a range of cultural explorations which clearly anticipate the debates of the following decades, without being yoked to, or delimited by, the national question as a salient political issue (which was yet to fully emerge). Scottish International magazine (1968–74), for example, set its store on newness and exploration, not recovery of the past. In Bell’s words,

Our story today, then, is about our stories: their history and future, influences and influence. We cast the spotlight not only on Scotland’s tales but on their tellers – the folklorists and the fabulists, short story writers and the seanachaidhean – those who have delicately spun their colourful yarns from the threads that connect us all. The Daily Telegraph was impressed by the book’s ability to meld “engrossing individual storylines” with “cultural shifts such as the birth of Scottish nationalism, the death of industry, the sexual revolution and the boom in North Sea oil”. [5] The New Statesman noted that four years’ worth of research had gone into the book and finished its review with the line: “It’s some achievement”. [6] To achieve better balance, there should be more reference to the common characteristics of the British people… ( Royal Commission papers, National Archive, HO 221/360). Books of 2010: Authors, actors, politicians, sports stars and more reveal their top reads of the year". Scotland on Sunday. 14 December 2010 . Retrieved 1 July 2011.

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Whether circular or not, we should notice that the culturalist narrative includes ample room for historical contingency and the unexpected twist. In a 2014 essay Craig observes that ‘in 1990 no political party in Scotland was in favour of the Parliament that actually came into existence in 1999’ ( Craig 2014, 1). 3

There is no strong ideological pulse beating through devolution, no political theology hovering above the pragmatic fudging of institutional reform. This makes the meaning of devolution both conveniently flexible and somewhat unstable, both as a policy and as an object of knowledge. Perhaps appropriately for an enterprise involving the deliberate erosion of central authority, devolution is always susceptible to being commandeered and re-defined, bent to stronger narrative impulses than those of its tinkering architects. Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year 2010, And The Land Lay Still is a panoramic exploration of late 20th Century Scotland through the eyes of James Robertson’s characters; natives, immigrants, journalists and politicians, dropouts and spooks making their way in a changing country.This occasionally stilted inter-meshing of Scottish politics and fiction has much to do with our own historical moment. As several articles in this issue of C21 Literature suggest, recent Scottish fiction and its critical reception are strongly conditioned by ongoing constitutional debate (see Hames 2012, Hames 2013). In accounting for links between Scottish literary and political developments of the past few decades, the scholar – like the historical novelist – faces a range of interpretive challenges and ambiguities. But they also encounter an established literary-critical discourse tending to draw strong and clear connections across the same doubtful terrain, lines guided by the paradigm of ‘cultural devolution’. This article condenses the findings of a two-year research project exploring the emergence and legacy of this paradigm. 1 This version of Craig’s essay is yet to be published; he kindly sent me a draft in the summer of 2014. The main thrust of his argument is repeated in the shorter piece Craig 2014a. [ Over the past few months library staff and book group members have been looking at titles by just some of the authors who are set to appear. The novel’s narrative is shaped around the portfolio of the late photographer Angus Pendreich. His son Michael is involved in the establishment of a new exhibition of his renowned father’s work. If for Craig the ‘effective cause’ of devolution’s endorsement in 1997 was cultural revolution, there is little doubt that the proximate cause was electoral. This part of the story is well-trodden ground, and vividly told in Robertson’s novel: Winnie Ewing’s sensational victory for the SNP in the 1967 Hamilton by-election, and growing alarm within the Labour government at the threat posed by the nationalists, rising sharply after the discovery of North Sea Oil in 1970. Both to allay and defer these pressures, Harold Wilson announced his intention to appoint a Royal Commission on the Constitution in late 1968.