What the Tea Cake zealots tell us about Scotland

IT is now 20 years since the nation first caught i n cinemascope that most notorious and profane attempt to sum up the Scottish condition. ‘It’s s***e being Scottish,’ spat Ewan McGregor in the film Trainspotting. ‘We’re the lowest of the low.’

We must not view these necessarily as the actor’s sentiments but rather those of his character, heroin addict Mark Renton, whose opinions were given to him by novelist Irvine Welsh, a fervent supporter of Scottish independence. How is winter in Miami, by the way, Mr Welsh? Balmier than Leith in January, I trust?

Back in 1996, Renton was warming to his theme. The Scots, his organ-grinder Mr Welsh wanted us to know, were ‘the scum of the f****** Earth’. We were ‘wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash’.

Perhaps it was McGregor’s fine acting which gave the scene piquancy. Maybe we paid attention because this was the engine-room of the film, the explanation – justification even – for Welsh’s world of agonised nihilists self-medicating on drugs, pills and criminal thrills.

But, from a distance of 20 years, these words do not so much define the Scottish cringe as incite a whole new one. Only a people as selfindulgent as the Scottish hard-Left could look at the nation’s lot in the late 20th century and conclude that it registered anywhere at all on a global scale of wretchedness.

Only those with no real notion of servitude or powerlessness could consider those to number among the misfortunes of an affluent nation in the democratic West.

Wretchedness

I have another complaint about what Welsh made Renton say. I liked being Scottish a lot more in 1996 than I do now.

Back then, I don’t suppose many would have bothered very much about Tunnock’s rebranding one of i ts core products as The Great British Tea Cake in a promotion appearing i n the London Underground. British was not a rude a word in the 1990s Scotland I remember.

Today, in the estimation of a people’s army of Scottish Government-supporting internet users, the Lanarkshirebased company is run by ‘traitors’ and ‘ scumbags’ whose products we should now boycott. Of course, many cybernats have been off their Tunnock’s Tea Cakes ever since the firm’s managing director Boyd Tunnock gave his support to the No campaign in the independence referendum.

They have been off their Harry Potter too because the novelist who invented him is a No-er. David Bowie? Pure dead to them now. Eddie Izzard too. And Kermit the Frog.

‘I never imagined a Scottish biscuit company would turn on its own customers and employees,’ wrote Facebook user Gordon Ross the other day, apparently in all seriousness. ‘But it seems the narrow-mindedness of an old man is more important than the company.’

Can this really be the promised land the Scots have been lurching towards these last 20 years? If, as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warrants, we will soon claim it, is this really what all the gnashing of Nationalist teeth was for? How terrifying a recipe, for all that would make an independent Scotland reek of awfulness to bully, besmirch and boycott an iconic business whose boss dares to express an opinion.

I preferred the old Scotland where narrow- mindedness meant what it used to mean. Today we have men who want to rid Scotland of all political outlooks but their own, flinging it around at dissenters without a moment’s pause to hear themselves.

Another thing that I quite liked about the Scotland of the 1990s is the Hogmanay programmes then were just faintly embarrassing.

A few nights ago STV’s one was quite shameless. So seduced are we supposed to be by the idea of our sma’ world, a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns nationhood, that a guest appearance by wee Nicola the First Minister on Elaine C Smith’s Burdz Eye View of Hogmanay just before the bells is meant to delight, rather than appal.

Identity

We are supposed to forget Elaine C Smith’s prominent role in the independence campaign and join in the party because it’s New Year and she has her entertainer’s hat on tonight. What is Nicola Sturgeon doing with her then? Join in the party indeed.

Can we begin to imagine the hammering Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron would have taken from the SNP if he had turned up on a similar broadcast presented by a mate in London? Why are we supposed to revile Tory cronies and revere SNP ones?

‘Some hate the English,’ continued Mark Renton as cinema audiences sat transfixed by the junkie’s political lament. ‘I don’t. They’re just w******. We, on the other hand, are COLONISED by w******. Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonised BY.’

It is a romantic notion among supporters of independence that Scotland was colonised by England and now, rather like Botswana or Bahrain, must be given its freedom. The truth is we stood shoulder to shoulder with England as colonisers. We were free all along. The culture he derides is our own.

Me, I don’t hate the English either. Nor do I have any words for them that must be starred out. But I am starting to envy them. Whatever happens in the independence debate in the coming years, the English face no challenge to their cultural identity. Sunday roasts, red pillar boxes, cups of tea at elevenses, the Grand National, rainy bank holidays...whatever their touchstones of Britishness, they will remain as much so in the event of Scotland leaving the Union as staying in it. Okay, perhaps they will lose a Great British tea cake.

The English living in Scotland, those pro-independence and those against, will keep their Britishness and their Englishness either way. I envy the security of that cultural identity and wish I had it too.

But no, Mr Welsh, back here in the land of your birth, it still isn’t s***e being Scottish. It’s just worse than it used to be.