INTERVIEW
‘The creases on his face could only belong to someone for whom mirth and laughter are not chores’
these three books were published has been the most vibrant in modern Scottish history. Devo- lution was finally achieved in 1999 and that in turn has brought us to the edge of independ- ence. As the nation prepares to determine its constitutional future there has never been more inquiry about our past as we seek to unravel its portents and look to interpret the signs of those times and these. And so, Devine’s great trilogy has become the accompanying primer of the Scottish nation. Sir Tom has held the senior post in history
at the universities of Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Edinburgh and his CV, which could fill a brochure, seems like it belongs to the father of a nation. In person though, Sir Tom, who cele- brated his sixty-ninth birthday last month, is as far removed from the popular idea of a senior academic and professor as it’s possible to be. The creases on his face could only belong to someone for whom mirth and laughter are not chores, though they hint at pain too. He is endlessly gossipy and wants to hear the latest about the newspaper world, Celtic FC and all the news that’s unfit to print about those who occupy our parliament.
Upwardly mobile He is unashamedly third generation Irish Catholic, all four of his grandparents emigrat- ing from Donegal and Cavan in 1890. ‘I was blessed by having a father who was among the first from that ethnic background to attend university, which he did in the 1930s,’ he says. ‘When we were growing up on a Motherwell housing scheme in the early 1950s I was acutely aware that my father was the only man with a professional background. As such, I remember vividly that our home was always busy with young men seeking references for jobs. ‘My dad always advised them never to state
that they had been educated at Our Lady’s High School, the Catholic Secondary, but to say Motherwell High School.’ It was a time when Catholics were still
excluded from the reserved professions and the high earning white collar jobs. ‘One day, I remember a young lad returning to the house and telling my dad: “I didn’t know what to say when they asked me what company of the Boys Brigade I belonged to”.’ Scotland’s eternal sectarian issue has, of course, attracted much of Sir Tom’s academic
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rigour. Has the problem improved since then? ‘Absolutely and utterly, yes,’ he proclaims. ‘The Irish finally reached occupational parity in 2001 and now so many influential positions in Scottish society and politics are held by people from an Irish/Catholic background.’ Sir Tom’s career as prince of Scotland’s
historians had a deeply unpromising start. He dropped history in his second year at school ‘because it was so uninteresting’. His awakening came when he attended Strathclyde University in the 1960s and chose it as one of five subjects. The history department was full of young, vibrant English lecturers who were ambitious to publish their work. ‘They had been reared as social and cultural historians and were inter- ested in people. That was when I realised this was the Queen of all disciplines.’ Soon we are talking social upheaval again
and he is gently deconstructing my rather simplistic class analysis as to why Britain managed to avoid revolution and civil strife when Russia, France, Italy and Germany did not. ‘You need to remember that the Labour Party signally failed to take office in the inter- war years at a time of intense economic crisis. Indeed the most successful UK party during this time was the Conservative Party and built on a working class vote. Even as late as 1955 they commanded more than 50 per cent of the Scottish vote. ‘Also, these revolutions were not really
working class in origin as the driving forces were usually the intellectuals and the middle classes. The UK state simply absorbed this potentially truculent sector of society into its power structure. The intermediate sectors of Scottish society were absorbed in career terms by the British state, either in London or in its empire.’ This remorseless absorption by the British
state of potential dissidents into positions of power also begins to explain our medieval pattern of land ownership. ‘This is a colos- sal and fundamental story,’ he says of why half of Scotland is owned by fewer than 450 landowners. ‘You could argue that until the middle
decades of the 20th century the British landed classes had a very considerable say in govern- ment. Secondly, there’s the House of Lords phenomenon. But there were other forces. New elites were buying into land – the merchants of
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