Scottish Politics

3rd November 2021

‘Survival Tools of the Anthropocene’: Islandness and Resilience in Saoirse Higgins’ Pap-ØY-cene
by Antonia Thomas

How is the Anthropocene at sea/local level? And how can climate change be be felt, and dealt with through the time worn understandings and handlings of material in the oceanic zones? Reviewing Saoirse Higgins' show PapØycene at the Pier in Stromness, Antonia Thomas suggests that art and artists can open us to new perspectives - and that Higgins, in particular, sets a 'benchmark' here.
29th October 2021

Looking for Scottish Modern
by Dominic Hinde

Are some places more obviously adaptable and amenable to new environmental measures and regimes, and what are the economics and politics of some of the new necessities? Guest Editor for our Climate theme, Dominic Hinde, surfs the local modern to sample the global drift.
2nd June 2021

Mining the Moral Economy:
Ewan Gibbs on Coal and Deindustrialisation
by Johnny Rodger

Ewan Gibbs' book 'Coal Country' claims to be the first full length study of deindustrialisation in the Scottish coalfields. But its scope is actually much broader and much more ambitious in its treatment of an age of massive social upheaval. Johnny Rodger reviews and appreciates that ambition.
2nd June 2021

Election 2021 and its Legacy
by Owen Dudley Edwards

The analysis of the political landscape of Scotland post-election 2021 that it's been worth waiting for. Owen Dudley Edwards looks at the results and the likely legacies, and puts them in the context of such a deep time and broad space as you won't be able to read elsewhere. It's a reading which is considered and generous in its appreciations, even if forthright in its partisanship.
24th April 2021

Borders in Borderland:
Scottish frontiers as makers and markers of national and urban identity
by Giovanna Guidicini

What would the introduction of control on the border between Scotland and England mean for those two jurisdictions? What would a politically independent Scotland's controlled borders mean for its relations with the rest of Europe? Giovanna Guidicini looks at the history of the frontier which set Scotland apart and marked out its national territorial integrity. How and why did it come about, and what were the Scots' and outsiders' reaction to it.
17th April 2021

Scotland: Lessons for an Electorate
by Owen Dudley Edwards

The fever is high, but public engagement seems, as yet to lag... Scottish politics is running a factionalist temperature from the 'Manky Jaiket' so-called greens to the Alba blues. New parties have appeared suddenly in the fray and schisms, nastiness, invective, small hatreds and big ugly prejudices seem the order of the day. Owen Dudley Edwards attempts a dispassionate round-up, and counsels an end to self-harm.
9th April 2021

When ye goooooooo … will ye throwback..? by Lorna Miller

Lorna Miller’s incisive work for The Drouth here brilliantly demonstrates how the lightning-fast flare of phantasmagorical developments in Scottish politics at the minute can only be truly grasped and conceived of in its bizarre momentum through a visual medium.
26th March 2021

Unhappy the Land in Need of ‘Heroic’ Men
by
David Archibald

THIS IS NOT AN ALLEGORY -A charismatic male political leader who gathers his support around his powerful personality, is revealed as a dodgy bully, who uses his power to prey sexually on women, is taken to court -nay takes the whole nation to court himself -twice!- is publicly disgraced, but sets himself up in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in Russian media, sets up his own new political party, full of sycophantic followers ... and ... WE MAKE NO EXCUSES FOR REPUBLISHING THIS REVIEW FROM SEVERAL YEARS AGO (from New Left Project 2012) - will we never learn ? It's enough to make us recommend never voting for a man to lead your country ...
9th November 2020

Spitfire Britain and the Zombie Union by Scott Hames

Can the kingdom still be united if there’s no unionism in the union? And was ‘Unionism’ simply the most charming and esoteric of checks and balances on the ‘union’? It may all seem abstruse now, but Scott Hames sees us hurtling through an absurdly persistent pragmaticism towards a constitutional car crash.