New Statesman Scotland
One of the really nice things about being Prime Minister (or even being a run-of-the-mill cabinet minister) must be the ability to put things on the agenda. Drop a word or two in public, and, before you know it, the whole country is chewing over what you just said. Tony Blair did it a couple of weeks ago with his "proud to be British" speech to English local newspaper editors. Ever since, people up and down the land have been mulling over what is, and what is not, British. And where Englishness stops and Britishness starts. The New Statesman did its bit last week with a front- cover essay by Michael Bywater who set out to describe all the contradictions inherent in being English (although it did seem that many of the characteristics he described- "drizzle, respectability, class, public squalor, private making-do" - had more to do with Britain than England). At the end of his analysis (tirade, really), Bywater came to the conclusion that, for most English folk, none of this mattered a toss. "Englishness: who cares?" was his top and bottom line. Well, maybe.
Acouple of years ago, this diaryist was involved in making a television programme that involved wandering around England trying to gauge the mood of the country in the wake of Tony Blair's constitutional changes in Scotland and Wales. We interviewed right across the board, from snatched "vox pops" in the streets and the Wembley terraces to lengthy ruminations with trade unionists, businessmen, politicians (including John Major) and pundits like Melvyn Bragg and Lord Rees-Mogg. What was striking was how many people were prepared - anxious even - to voice their opinions on the subject of England and being English. We had no trouble filling our days. There was one question we asked everyone we talked to: do you feel British or do you feel English? At least 80 per cent of the people we asked - from stallholders in a Newcastle market across to Jeremy Paxman - were happy to declare themselves English first and British second. Only the older people put Britain first. All of which leads this diary to suspect that England's sense of itself is much stronger than is conventionally thought and lies quite close to the surface. It would not take too much to see it break through. The recent political chippiness of the Jocks and Taffs might well nudge the English into making the crucial distinction between Britain and England - to the benefit of William Hague. We'll see.
While Donald Dewar and his executive scratch their collective head over the costs of housing the Scottish Parliament, others are doing the same over the building once earmarked for the use of that august body. We are talking, of course, about the one-time Royal High School on the southern flanks of the Calton Hill, which was used occasionally by the Scottish Grand Committee and which has been lying empty ever since our MSPs trooped into the Assembly Hall on the Mound. The lawyers of the Crown Office also used to inhabit bits of it, but they have decamped to new premises in what used to be the Heriot Watt University in Chambers Street. So, what to do with Thomas Hamilton's 1829 neo-classical masterpiece? Timothy Clifford - Scotland's ever- inventive arts supremo - has come up with a good wheeze. Use the old RHS as a National Museum of Photography. Convert the old assembly halls and classrooms - where Walter Scott once sweated over his letters - to house the nation's extraordinary collection of 19th-century photographs. Timothy Clifford has come up with a fine idea for a fine building. He deserves some political power to his elbow.
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