The Missing Scotland

The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don t think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty. RUSSELL BRAND From national and local elections to the debate on the independence referendum, a large part of Scotland is missing from our political and public debates. This book directly gives voice to the missing people of Scotland as Willie Sullivan (in association with the Electoral Reform Society) investigates why this part of Scotland is lost, asking the missing electorate to articulate why they find themselves so politically disengaged, what their take of mainstream Scotland is and what they feel is lacking, and finally exploring what they feel must be done in order change this for the better. A large part of Scotland is missing from our political and public debates, what kind of changes are needed for them to engage? GERRY HASSAN, Open Scotland Series Editor A lot of people in Scotland have no daily contact with democracy; they have no contact in their immediate personal environment with democracy. That is not just a jigsaw piece that is missing in Scottish democracy; it is a founding stone of democracy that is missing in Scotland. DEMOCRACY MAX Report

How our nation has changed and why there's no going back Scotland has changed fundamentally. This story has become a familiar one, but have we yet understood its full meaning and the resulting consequences? What kind of choices do we face as a society and nation about our future, and how can we best shape them? Scotland the Bold explores how Scotland became what it is, considers what choices and obstacles it faces, identifies signs of people taking power into their own hands and addresses what we can all do to create a radically different, democratic and better Scotland. Scotland is now visibly different from the rest of the UK and the self-evidently bankrupt economic, social and political thinking that dominate British elites. Majority Scottish opinion is repulsed by a million people relying on food-banks and the prevalence of welfare sanctions in the fifth richest economy in the world. However, that doesn’t mean that Scotland is automatically morally superior - for in our own nation we have our own poverty, our own shames and silences, and our own elites. For self-government to have any meaning it entails addressing some hard and difficult truths about ourselves. All of this requires that we begin to talk honestly and maturely about Scotland’s future and some of the difficult choices we will have to make; reflecting on where we have come from, what we are proud of, mistakes, and how we do things better in the future. 'There could be no better harbinger... of possibilities than this bracing, searching, discomforting and ultimately exhilarating book.' Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times

One of the most original, moving and beautifully written non-fiction works of recent years, The Missing marked the acclaimed debut of one of Britain's most astute and important writers.In a brilliant merging of reportage, social history and memoir, Andrew O'Hagan clears a devastating path from the bygone Glasgow of the 1970s to the grim secrets of Gloucester in the mid 1990s.'A triumph in words.' Independent on Sunday'The Missing, part autobiography, part old-fashioned pavement-pounding, marks the most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time.' Gordon Burn, Independent'A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now.' Will Self, Observer Books of the Year'His vision of modern Britain has the quality of a poetic myth, with himself as Bunyan's questing Christian and the missing as Dantesque souls in limbo.' Blake Morrison, Guardian

A woman's unsolved family history comes back to haunt her in an eerie, old, isolated manor in the Scottish Highlands. Ailsa Calder has inherited half of a house. The other half belongs to a man who disappeared from her life without a trace twenty-seven years ago—her father. Leaving London behind to settle the inheritance, Ailsa returns to her childhood home, nestled amongst the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, joined by the half-sister who's almost a stranger to her. Ailsa can't escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her—as if her past hungers to consume her. She also can't ignore how the neighborhood animals refuse to set one foot within the gates of the garden. When the first nighttime intruder shows up and the locals in the isolated community pry into her plans for the manor, Ailsa becomes terrified that the mysteries surrounding the beautiful old home will cost her everything.

Politics took a decisive turn twenty years ago with the birth of the modern Scottish Parliament. People in Scotland want to 'make a difference' and build a better future. Scotland the Brave? offers both an acute assessment of where we are today and a route map to the future. Editors Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow have brought together an impressive array of Scottish and international voices to cover concerns including the economy, environment, social policy, beliefs, human rights, media and culture. After two decades of significant change, the contributors describes how wealth is created and distributed in Scotland; ways of addressing social divisions and inequality; the needs to respond to the climate emergency, as well as considering challenges to democracy. This book provides powerful, non-partisan visions for the future that indicates how we can rise to challenges of our times and truly become 'Scotland the Brave'.

This book participates in the modern recovery of the memory of the long-forgotten relationship between Scotland and the Caribbean. Drawing on theoretical paradigms of world literature and transnationalism, it argues that Caribbean slavery profoundly shaped Scotland’s economic, social and cultural development, and draws out the implications for current debates on Scotland’s national narratives of identity. Eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Scottish writers are re-examined in this new light. Morris explores the ways that discourses of "improvement" in both Scotland and the Caribbean are mediated by the modes of pastoral and georgic which struggle to explain and contain the labour conditions of agricultural labourers, both free and enslaved. The ambivalent relationship of Scottish writers, including Robert Burns, to questions around abolition allows fresh perspectives on the era. Furthermore, Morris considers the origins of a hybrid Scottish-Creole identity through two nineteenth-century figures - Robert Wedderburn and Mary Seacole. The final chapter moves forward to consider the implications for post-devolution (post-referendum) Scotland. Underpinning this investigation is the conviction that collective memory is a key feature which shapes behaviour and beliefs in the present; the recovery of the memory of slavery is performed here in the interests of social justice in the present.

Originally published in 1966, this was the first book on this subject to be published for over a hundred years. It covers all facets including little-known types of Gaelic song, the bagpipes and their music, including the esoteric subject of pibroch, the Ceol Mor or ‘Great Music’ of the pipes. It gives a comprehensive review of the fiddle composers and their music, and of the Clarsach and its revival, with an example of all-but-extinct Scottish harp music. A chapter is devoted to the music of Orkney and Shetland and the book contains over 100 examples of music many of which were from the author’s own collection and published here for the first time.

Archaeologists show us how the Neolithic human lived in mainland ScotlandWhat was life like in Scotland between 4000 and 2000BC? Where were people living? How did they treat their dead? Why did they spend so much time building extravagant ritual monuments? What was special about the relationship people had with trees and holes in the ground? What can we say about how people lived in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age of mainland Scotland where much of the evidence we have lies beneath the ploughsoil, or survives as slumped banks and ditches, or ruinous megaliths?Each contribution to this volume presents fresh research and radical new interpretations of the pits, postholes, ditches, rubbish dumps, human remains and broken potsherds left behind by our Neolithic forebears.From the APFWhat was life like in Scotland between 4000 and 2000BC? Where were people living? How did they treat their dead? Why did they spend so much time building extravagant ritual monuments? What was special about the relationship people had with trees? Why was so much time and effort spent digging holes and filling them back up again? What can we say about how people lived in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age of mainland Scotland where much of the evidence we have lies beneath the plough soil, or survives as slumped banks and filled ditches, or ruinous megaliths?This book will draw together leading experts and young researchers to present fresh research and outline radical new interpretations of the pits, postholes, ditches, rubbish dumps, human remains and broken potsherds left behind by our Neolithic forebears. Much of this evidence has come to light in the past few decades, putting the emphasis very much lowland, mainland Scotland as opposed to more famous Orcadian Neolithic sites. Inspired by the work of Gordon Barclay, the leading scholars of Scotland's Neolithic in the last 40 years, the chapters in this book offer a wide-ranging analysis of the evidence we have for the first farmers in Scotland.