Wiser and richer in culture and diversity

Sir, – A.A. Bullions’ contribution to the crime and punishment debate (Explanation for criminal activity, Courier, August 25) is too simplistic and demands a response.

The view that crime has increased since the 1700s directly due to the reduced engagement and influence of the established religions simply does not hold water, holy, still or sparkling.

The first issue being the vast majority of crimes in the 18th and 19th Century were not prosecuted.

Historians of the 20th Century can investigate unprosecuted crimes, and build statistics, unfortunately historians investigating 18th and 19th Century crimes have a more difficult, possibly impossible task.

It is therefore highly likely that the crime statistics of this earlier period are under reported because of this.

Many factors drive crime rates. Poverty, survival, alcohol and avarice are primary and are well known.

Without a welfare state, churches often provided the safety net for some or there was the Poor House in Victorian times and beyond.

We should be grateful to them for showing the way towards a social welfare system.

However religion, particularly our Scottish

Calvinism, has a rather perverse attitude to social welfare, where standing on one’s own feet is the expectation.

A family falling on hard times through no fault of their own were pilloried and stigmatised, as weak or lacking in smeddum, as Grassic Gibbon called it.

This attitude is still embedded, but gradually being expunged from our psyche and culture.

Scotland has a history of being known as ‘The Violent North’ and I note that there is new work to be published late this year on this subject, by Anne-Marie Kilday.

In the 300 years since the 1700s, nations including Scotland have had huge upheavals of civil war, famine, epidemics, international wars, clearances, industrialisation, mass unemployment, mass movement of labour, and we are still standing.

We are wiser and richer in both culture and diversity.

We always were well educated and that has continued. We have survived.

We are now at the point where we need to take charge of our own resources.

Religion is a personal thing and it will continue when we are independent as well.

Alistair Ballantyne. Birkhill, Angus.