Aye H


AS the William Wallace story any relevance in the current referendum debate?


Lanark had its annual Wallace Day


March recently (double the turn-out from last year) with excellent speeches from two of the younger and more dynamic future-focussed thinkers in the SNP, Dr Aileen McLeod MSP and Alyn Smith the very articulate Europhile MEP.


Speeches made around the name of


Wallace have to be carefully crafted (‘nuanced in poli-speak) as there are many who call for his name to be kept out of focus within the YES campaign.


‘Freedom’, ‘Liberty’, ‘the English-enemy’,


‘national liberation’ are all part of the Wallace discourse, rhetoric/mythologies; yet all have been banned within the douce, ever so respectable, YES campaign’s communication strategy.


Yet any society that deserves the title


‘Nation’ has earned that right, often through the diligence, courage, sacrifice and patriotism of national heroes. Indeed many new post-colonial states have created national honours called National Hero, celebrated annually.


The collective global history of the politics


of nationalism has provided a pantheon of heroic figures, Ghandi, Mandela, Kenyatta, Washington, Ho Chi Minh, Marti, Bolivar while in Wallace and Bruce, Scotland has its own independence heroes to join that illustrious list.


There is no need here to reiterate the


Wallace details but his status as Hero of Scotland is firmly and reliably situated in historic truth as well as in our deeply felt national mythological/cultural and folk heritage.


By 1297 William Wallace was, in the


words of the Book of Pluscarden, able to emerge as a ‘true champion of the kingdom for the independence of its people’; a struggle that climaxed with the victorious Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and subsequently the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.


Wallace, by his many acts of defiance


and assertiveness, created the necessary heroic aura within the folklore of Scotland that enabled the very creation of a medieval single nation of Scotland from what was a dislocated assembly of disparate tribal fiefdoms. It was the idea of Wallace created by his acts of courage (and indeed the barbarity of his punishment) that made possible the several heroic myths and legends which any society needs in order to engender the ‘imagined nation’ which we call Scotland.


Yet as Alyn Smith told us in delivering his 8


fine memorial address: ‘…a nation must know its history,


and that’s true. Independence for me


The Wallace story still has a message for the YES campaign


From Thom Cross


isn’t about history, it never has been. It’s not about flags, songs, language, culture, ancient battles seen through the blood soaked mists of time. Independence for me has always been about what we don’t have: Power.


The power to put people back in


charge of their own lives, to protect the vulnerable, because we can all be weak, we can all stumble and what is the Common Weal if it isn’t US working together with our neighbours.


The power to grow our economy,


because too many of our people are too poor and too many of our communities are blighted by the symptoms of poverty, all the more shaming in one of the world’s richest countries.


The part of Glasgow I’m from has a


lower male life expectancy than the Gaza Strip! I’m angry, but I’ve learned to channel that anger into winning our country back and fixing it’.


Words that speak to the spirit of


Wallace as a fighter for a just cause, recognized by Robert Burns.


Burns in several of his letters


indicated that the first book and THE book which shaped his national consciousness was The Life of Wallace with its narrative of


patriotism, valour and independence. ‘The story of Wallace poured a Scottish


prejudice in my veins,’ said Burns, ‘which will boil along there till the flood gates of life shut in eternal rest.’


Without the creation of a narrative of


romantic heroic patriotism there can be little sense of ‘nation’.


Neil Davidson in his ‘The Origins of


Scottish Nationhood’ makes this implicit: ‘First, although there is a perfectly rational case to be made for Scottish nationalism as a political movement, no nationalist cause has ever sustained support without mobilising the myths of which, to a large extent, every national identity consists.’


Historians have, at best, an ambivalent


attitude towards the binary distinction in the Greek logos (words of truth) and mythos (words of authorative belief). Yet increasingly we read of the study of the confluence of myth and history particularly within early mediaeval studies and in our case Celtic and early Scottish historiography.


Yet, Wallace was a proto-type of the


independence warrior and by his indefatigable acts of bravery including the ultimate blood sacrifice of his own life, he has inspired generations of ‘ Scottish patriots’ to further the political cause of Independence. He inspired others too


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12