Welsh Journals

SCOTTISH NATIONALISM. By H. J. Hanham. Faber and Faber, 1969. Pp. 240. 36s. In the introduction to his book on Scottish Nationalism, Professor Hanham goes out of his way to explain that it was written in three months and was 'the outcome of a series of chance conversations'. This scarcely does credit to those sections which contain some new material. Hanham has gone over in detail the arguments that led to the formation of the Scottish Office in the 1880s, he deals carefully with the Liberal era of 'home rule all round' before 1914, and patiently traces the individuals, periodicals and small groups that came together to form the Scottish National Party (S.N.P) in 1934. On the other hand, he did not stay long enough in Scotland to grasp its history apart from these sections where he collected his own material, and he has some very curious ideas about Scottish society and current politics. The historical oddities are that he draws no distinction between the 1760-90 period of the Edinburgh enlightenment and the Romantic revival that followed. He says that 'all intelligent Scots in the eighteenth century were preoccupied with the problem of national development-a time when Hume, Ferguson, Robertson, Adam Smith and their coterie of lawyers and clergymen were all positively anti-nationalist. They wanted to rid themselves of Scotticisms in their speech, they were not enthusiasts or local patriots and they hoped that Edinburgh would be accepted as a cosmopolitan city with European standards in architecture, letters and learning. The Romantic revival, which went back to a Scottish dialect with Burns and to glorifying the past with Scott, was quite a different force which arose under changed historical circumstances and had very different results. Similarly, Hanham fails to distinguish adequately between a desire to improve legislation and institutions and support for national independence. He lists the Radical M.P. of the 1860s, Duncan McLaren, as a member of 'the first effective nationalist movement', the Scottish Rights Society of 1853. But this Society was set up to demand more attention for Scotland by Westminster, and McLaren was so totally a unionist that he broke with his passionate attachment to the Liberal Party rather than follow Glad- stone when the latter espoused home rule for Ireland in 1886. One of the main features of modern Scottish history and politics has been that, with the removal of the aristocracy (for most of the year) and the centre of government to London, Toryism became almost as alien a force as in Wales. This left Scottish society in the hands of the middle class-the lawyers, clergymen, teachers, bankers, insurance agents and businessmen. As long as they and those skilled workers who were en- franchised were alike Liberal in politics, Scotland remained a Liberal preserve. The modern Scottish Unionist and Conservative Party (its