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Location: Aberdeen
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We can still love Indy music if we quit the UK
By ANDREW NICOLL
Published: 12th November 2012
WHEN former Chancellor Alistair Darling delivered the John P Mackintosh memorial lecture on Friday night, speaking in honour of a Labour MP who fought for devolution long before it was fashionable, he was on fertile ground.
Naturally, as the figurehead of the Better Together campaign, Mr Darling was bound to use his speech to bash the Nats and their plans for independence.
And he made some good and obvious points.
For example he pointed out that it is ludicrous for the Nats to claim that we would still be “British” after breaking up the UK.
The Irish, the ones in the south anyway, don’t think of themselves as British and would probably be pretty insulted if you called them British.
The Americans, the Indians, the Jamaicans, the Australians, the Maltese, all those countries great and small which opted for independence and somehow did not end up living in the Stone Age eating roots, none of them is “British” now.
But, that said, I think I must live in a very different world from the one that Alistair Darling inhabits.
In his speech, he warned of another looming danger of independence. Mr Darling said: “Apart from meaning that your friends in Wales, your family in England and your workmates from Northern Ireland will, effectively and overnight, become foreigners, independence also signals the loss of things that we so readily identify with and cherish.
“British music will no longer be our music. British art, dance and drama will no longer be ours. British sporting success will be someone else’s to celebrate.”
What can this mean?
Does it mean that when Mr Darling currently meets people from elsewhere in the world, his first thought is “I say! Seems a bit rum. There’s a touch of the Johnny Foreigner about this one!”
Does he think that people in Scotland who have English relatives would stop liking them quite as much after independence, sort of: “Well, he used to be my brother-in-law but now, he’s gone a bit foreign.” Maybe I’m alone in this but I don’t feel that way about French people or Greek people, so why would I feel that way about English people?
And the musical stuff is just bizarre. Scottish people would lose all claim to British music after independence.
“It will no longer be our music” Mr Darling said.
So, does that mean I can’t listen to the Beatles after independence? Or can I listen to them, so long as I don’t enjoy it or so long as it doesn’t mean anything to me?
I’m sorry, but that’s just bonkers. It’s like saying Frank Sinatra isn’t “our music” because he’s American, Tchaikovsky isn’t “our music” because he’s Russian and Mozart was an Austrian so he’s definitely not “our music”.
On the other hand Handel is currently “our music” because, although he was German, he lived in London. But his Messiah was first performed in Dublin. Maybe that means it used to be “our music” and then the Irish went independent so it stopped being “our music”.
What about Oscar Wilde? He was Irish. What about Spike Milligan? He was born in India and ended up Irish and Michael Bentine was Peruvian — that’s half the Goons gone already!
British art, dance and drama would cease to be ours, says Mr Darling. But, really, who thinks that way?
I understand why you might not like Picasso but is that because all his faces have both eyes on the same side of the nose or because he was Spanish? Would you admire Van Gogh’s sunflowers a little bit more if he had painted them in Ayr instead of Arles?
Do you look back to the ballet performances of Margot Fonteyn and curse inwardly because she danced with Nuryev who was obviously, deliberately and provocatively being a damned foreigner? Abba? Foreign rubbish! Sidney Devine? A fantastic, quality British performer! Bob Dylan? Boo, nasty foreign nonsense. Fran and Anna? Hurrah, British and proud!
It’s utter cobblers. Worse than that it’s based on a notion of Scotland that nobody — least of all a proud Scot like Alistair Darling — would recognise today. We’re not like that. We don’t judge people on whether they are “foreign”.
We don’t act like William McGonagall must be a better poet than William Shakespeare because Shakespeare was English and, therefore, he was obviously rubbish.
But somehow we’re supposed to believe that the midnight chimes would ring on the day of independence and we would all suddenly transform into Jock-Aye-The-Noo, See-You-Jimmy, little Scotlanders.
The Yes campaign is telling us that those magic bells will ring and nothing will change — except that Scotland will suddenly be transformed into an economic power house flowing with milk and honey and that’s rubbish.
But it’s just as silly to suggest that independence will stop us singing along to the Beatles — the way they do in Japan.
Whatever independence might mean, for good or ill, it won’t change the people we are.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fe ... z2C8YXfT2f
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