The Labour-dominated committee would then redraft the question to comply with its socially inclusive agenda, so that it read: How do you represent non-Christian, same-sex, age-neutral Scottishness in a single, iconic image? Before the committee reported, half of its members would have died from cancer, heart disease and strokes, and a handful would have resigned in protest at the gradualist approach to the question, setting up their own fundamentalist splinter committee instead.
When it was revealed last week that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in Whitehall was to publish a list of English icons, with the aim of provoking a debate about “personal and national identity”, any right-thinking person north of the border should have thought, “there but for the grace of God”. Such inclusive exercises in opinion- gathering are inevitably fraught with the kind of dangers that induce family members to punch one another on Christmas Day. Instead the news elicited the predictable Scottish response: “If England is getting one, where’s ours?” Well, the Scots may soon have their wish. Icons Online, the website company that is working with the government to produce the English list, is now making overtures to the Scottish executive.
In Scotland we like to flatter ourselves with the belief that we are a little more self-aware than our near neighbours. Decades of navel-gazing have given us a clear-eyed opinion on our own defining national icons. Hasn’t it? We shall soon find out. The 2,000 suggestions already made south of the border contain the predictable collection of John Bull imagery, nostalgia and stiff upper lips. They include morris dancing, the bowler hat, good manners and a cup of tea.
So what would be the likely result of a search for Scotland’s icons? It’s hard to argue against the grandeur of the Forth Rail Bridge, the majesty of Glencoe, the unmistakable silhouette of Edinburgh Castle. But most voters will live in urban Scotland and none of them will be tourists.
There are Scots who have never worn tartan, nor seen a caber tossed in anger, nor looked a real live Highland cow in the eye. Speak to a dozen people walking past the Scott Monument in Edinburgh and three will not know the Christian name of the man it commemorates. And the skirl o’ the pipes can elicit just as many grimaces as tears in the eye, even among patriots.
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So why should such items of shortbread-tin, souvenir-shop schlock be used to identify us as a nation? Why should the hoodie define us any less readily than the kilt? More Scots of a certain age drink Buckfast, not whisky. And what of our diet? How many Scots actually eat haggis regularly, other than the deep-fried variety? What of the ubiquitous bag of chips — also known as a Glasgow salad — or the doner kebab supper with cheese, or the chicken tikka masala, whose origins are said to lie in Scotland’s largest city? The truth is, we in Scotland are overfamiliar with many of our most recognisable icons. We are wise to attempt to use them to define us. A whole industry has grown up, funded by government millions over many decades, to tweak the way we Scots sell ourselves abroad. The politicians’ authorised version of Scotland for overseas consumption gives the impression the country is one big biotech park. It is no more recognisable to ordinary Scots than the caricature portrayed in the songs of Harry Lauder.
THE Scotland we project to the world and the Scotland we inhabit are two very different countries. So maybe Scotland’s list of icons should differ from the English list by being more firmly rooted in the everyday lives and loves of average Scots. And maybe, in tune with our national pastime of self-flagellation, it should include icons that damn us and shame us, as well as those that we are proud to celebrate.
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Why should we not revel in our limitations if they represent what we are? Why should the iconic image of Scotland not be the hardened artery, the rain-drenched housing estate or the glorious sporting failure? Why should Jim Baxter playing keepie-uppie be portrayed as more representative of Scottish football, when Scots are more familiar with the sight of a desperately flailing Jim Leighton? By preferring the mundane to the epic, maybe we will risk the cardinal sin of couthiness. So what. It is a risk worth taking. So here are some random suggestions for Scottish icons.
1. Scotch broth: There are as many recipes for this in Scotland as there are mothers. Young girls should not be put off by their granny’s insistence that eating it will “put hairs on your chest”.
2. Auchtermuchty: This small Fife town was celebrated in the newspaper columns of Sir John Junor as the paragon of traditional Scottish values. It is the kind of place that celebrates frugality, piety and lack of ambition, and is the spiritual home of anyone who has ever twitched a net curtain.
3. Valvona & Crolla: A foodie cathedral where the Edinburgh middle-class comes to worship among the air-dried hams and over-priced spaghetti. This world- famous delicatessen, founded in 1934 and run by the Contini family, is a testament to the positive influence of immigrants to Scotland.
4. Old Firm derby: Passion and prejudice in equal measure — a reminder of what happens when different religions and traditions are twisted into a justification for bile, hatred and sometimes murderous violence. The football is incidental.
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5. Thistle: Spiky and resilient, yet beautiful as any rose. A true emblem of Scotland.
6. Iona: The cradle of Christianity in Scotland, the resting place of Scottish kings and, more recently, of Labour leader John Smith.
7. Scotch pie: A hymn to the consolations of grease and gristle. The sound you can hear when someone is eating one — quite apart from the chomping and slurping — is the noise arteries make when furring up.
8. Telephone box from Local Hero: Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film gave us the indelible image of the red phone box on the harbourside at Pennan. The scene where Mac, the American businessman played by Peter Riegert, calls the phone box from his skyscraper apartment is emblematic of the homesickness felt by every Scots exile. Even if his ma and da live in Glasgow and he has only been exiled to Cumbernauld.
9. Chained-up swings: Do they still chain up the swings on a Sunday in playparks in the Western Isles? Even if they don’t, the image is still worth preserving as a lesson in the baleful influence of undigested Calvinism. How many lives have been blighted and hopes thwarted by its icy certainties?
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10. The Horse Shoe bar: Primarily for the social mix of its clientele, perhaps the most democratic of any bar in Britain. Here, up a lane in central Glasgow, QCs and criminals, bankers and jakeys, all mingle around an island bar reputed to be one of the longest in the country.
11. A piper’s lament: Any Scot who is left unmoved by a lone piper playing The Flo’ers o’ the Forest should seriously consider emigration.
12. Oor Wullie: Obvious, perhaps, but impossible to leave out. The comic strip character has taught generations of Scottish schoolboys the art of malarkey, providing a bad example in almost everything he does. If Wullie was real he would be the target of an Asbo for persistent antisocial behaviour.
13. Buckfast: A tonic wine made by monks at a Benedictine monastery in Devon, and drunk in epic quantities by out-of-control teenagers in much of west Scotland.
14. The West Highland Line: The railway line from Fort William to Mallaig must be one of the finest train journeys in the world, negotiating bridges and viaducts through Glenfinnan and Arisaig, and giving ever-changing views of mountains, seascapes and the sands of Morar. Breathtaking.
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15. Hogmanay: Traditionalists may regret the demise of black bun and lumps of coal, but the spirit of this winter festival retains its pagan power. Despite growing commercialisation, the Scots still do it better than anyone else. The crunched glass underfoot. The suspension of laws and moral qualms.
16. Any poem by Norman MacCaig: They are all so good, it hardly matters which. Perhaps the one about Edinburgh, the city of his birth, where “Slatternly tenements wait til night/To make a Middle Ages in the sky”. Or the one set in Assynt in which he asks: “Who possesses this landscape?/The man who bought it or/I who am possessed by it?” Some of these suggestions are necessarily personal, and some the result of a particular prejudice. That is half the appeal. Someone else might dwell more on buildings. Billy Connolly’s banana boots might be more to somebody else’s taste, or Chic Murray’s bunnet. Rosslyn Chapel may top some lists, or a painting such as The Monarch of the Glen.
No doubt you have your own ideas. Iconography can be fun. Go on, pick your own.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Write to the Sunday Times with your Scottish icons
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