Woad rage, Wallace and blinkered nationalism

BRAVEHEART? Never seen it, partly because my one chance to catch it on its 1995 cinema run came in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and there were better things to do at the scene of the pivotal American Civil War battle.

Choosing Pickett’s Charge over popcorn, I toured the battlefield with a National Military Park history professor in my hire car.

Years later, I found Mel Gibson’s accent coach was stuntman Seoras Wallace.

He was plain George Wallace when I knew him in Stranraer. Now, I adore the Galloway Irish accent there but it’s tricky to master and that may go some way to explaining the strangulated tones of Mel Gibson as William Wallace.

Unlike the precise history I got at Gettysburg, Braveheart is Hollywood hokum. Yes, the woad looked good but it was about as realistic as the mangled timeline.

Most ludicrous was the idea Wallace was a humble Highlander – Lowland noble, more like, with much in common with the people he was rebelling against.

The film was largely shot in Ireland and in a pub in the shadow of Trim Castle (it doubled as York) the barman recognised my Scottish accent.

He hauled out a massive stone. ‘You’ll be interested in this…’ he said, lobbing it at me.

It was a polystyrene prop from the film, as lightweight as the script.

They’re showing Braveheart today on a big screen in Glasgow’s George Square and again I’ll give it a miss.

It’s the centrepiece of the ludicrous Hope Over Fear rally, fronted by perjurer Tommy Sheridan, backed by an unappealing roll call of second-string SNP types.

The screening is ideal for there is no finer metaphor for the intellectual bankruptcy of fundamentalist nationalists than Braveheart.

It’s a faux tale of doughty Scots defying the perfidious English. Pureheart Wallace is condemned to a horrible death while blackheart Edward I has generations of subjugation in mind…

It’s dross. Wallace, a product of his brutal times, had one opponent’s flayed skin turned into a baldric, a sword-belt.

And it’s stretching things to imagine modern Scotland’s many problems – faltering schools, an NHS in crisis, a feeble economy, lawless streets – are the fault of Edward Longshanks, cold in his grave this last 700 years or, indeed, of Mrs Thatcher, out of office for almost three decades.

But nationalists like it simple. They need a goodie – Us! – and a baddie – Them!

As George Orwell noted, nationalists suppose their narrative to be true so ‘therefore the facts must be made to fit it’.

We see it time and again: The BBC dares question independence, so MP Angus MacNeil derides them as no better than Kremlin propagandists RT.

Journalists dare quiz the party, so ex minister Kenny MacAskill besmirches us as dupes doing the bidding of sinister ‘Press barons’. Nicola Sturgeon is convinced the EU is beyond compare, so Leave voters must be belittled…

I’m in no position to judge whether Braveheart is a good film or bad, but I know it is a very poor basis for a political movement.