Albyn by Hugh MacDiarmid — Read

With increasing frequency there is a paragraph in the Scottish papers-more particularly the local papers, not the "national" organs-telling how a debate on the question of Home Rule for Scotland has been held here or there, and, almost invariably, the paragraph ends with the statement that, on a vote being taken, there was a large majority in favour of it. That is to say a majority of that small minority who attend meetings. No one who is in the habit of going up and down the country and coming into varied contact with the public can fail to observe that more and more are inclined to the movement with a sympathy which has greatly intensified within the past few years. These are they, in my opinion, who "feel in their bones" the larger issues of which I have been speaking, but have not yet developed more than a political reaction to them. Observers of very different shades of political opinion agree that the time is ripening for a new political nationalism, as part and parcel of a general national awakening. There is little agreement, however, as to how this widespread latent feeling may be crystallized, in the best interests of Scotland and the wider interests inevitably involved. Partial views, and partial solutions, abound; but none of these proffered precipitants are powerful enough to act on more than a small proportion of the flux of opinion that is obviously awaiting effective re-direction. What is it that intervenes in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, to prevent the sympathetic Scotsman from giving any practical effect to his feelings on such a matter?

Scotland is unique among European nations in its failure to develop a nationalist sentiment strong enough to be a vital factor in its affairs-a failure inconsistent alike with our traditional love of country and reputation for practicality. The reason probably lies in the fact that no comprehensive-enough agency has emerged; and the commonsense of our people has rejected one-sided expedients incapable of addressing the organic complexity of our national life. For it must be recognized that the absence of Scottish nationalism is, paradoxically enough, a form of Scottish self-determination. If that self-determination, which, in the opinion of many of us, has reduced Scottish arts and affairs to a lamentable pass, is to be induced to take a different form and express itself in a diametrically opposite direction to that which it has taken for the past two hundred and twenty years, the persuading programme must embody considerations of superior power to those which have so long ensured the opposite process. Scottish opinion is anachronism-proof in matters of this kind. The tendency inherent in the Union, to assimilate Scotland to England, and ultimately to provincialize the former-the stage which has been so unexpectedly but unmistakably arrested at the eleventh hour-has, as a matter of fact, not yet been effectively countered by the emergence of any principle demanding a reversed tendency.