Edinburgh is the Jekyll-and-Hyde town. The birthplace of the creator of literature's most famous two- in-one character, it has always hidden its disreputable side beneath a cloak of hypocrisy and respectability.
Robert Louis Stevenson based Jekyll-Hyde on the real-life Deacon Brodie, a pillar of Edinburgh society by day and a notorious criminal by night. Appropriately, the Deacon Brodie Tavern is the favourite howff and common meeting-ground of Members of the Scottish Parliament and parliamentary journalists.
The haunt is apt because the assembly that convenes nearby at the top of the Royal Mile is the Jekyll-and-Hyde parliament. When it is good, it is, well, not bad. And when it is bad, it is just plain silly.
Proceedings in the Scottish Parliament show why Scots can see the advantages of self-government, but continue to be exasperated by it. In the first 17 months of devolution, the main complaint has been that the parliament and the Scottish Executive seem to have no sense of priorities.
With a backlog of business to undo the effects of years of Tory government and decades of Whitehall and Westminster neglect, time spent on MSPs' housekeeping expenses and the flogging of politically correct hobby-horses was resented. Members have been urged to focus on "people's priorities", rather than worthy but far-from-urgent causes such as the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill, which is causing a flurry in the Holyrood henhouse.
When the parliament took time to debate the Highland Clearances and express "deepest regret" for the 19th-century depopulation of large tracts of northern Scotland, the general reaction was a mixture of boredom, bafflement and irritation. To many people, it was an exercise in eccentricity and all too typical in its lack of relevance.
What, you may well ask, is the sudden pertinence of events of 150 years ago? Why should MSPs be apologising, when there was no Scottish Parliament at the time? Will there now be similar apologies to the English for Bannockburn, the Wembley goalposts and the Bay City Rollers (but only if they say sorry for Culloden, the poll tax and Jimmy Hill)?
The evictions of Highland crofters and their families to make room for sheep and, later, deer were carried out with a cruelty and efficiency that bore comparison with the pogroms of eastern Europe. For generations, the blame was laid at the doors of the absentee landlords and Scottish nobility, like the Duke of Sutherland. Every Highland school child knows the story of the Sutherland agent Patrick Sellar who, confronted by an old woman of 90 who refused to leave her cottage, said: "Burn it down. The old witch has lived too long."
Modern historians, however, accept that the clearances were carried out by Scots against Scots, often with the pious approval of the Kirk, and that much of the land-grabbing was done by small-time local opportunists.
That did not prevent the members of the Brigadoon Tendency from having their day in the parliament. Jamie Stone, the Lib Dem whose constituency covers the great empty spaces of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, delved back into his family history and told of families "cleared from the strath" and forced to huddle under a tarpaulin in the churchyard, having been denied shelter in the church. Their pathetic scratchings in the window of Glencalvie kirk (" . . . this is the saddest thing of all . . . ") can still be read.
Lewis Macdonald MSP, originally from Stornoway, recalled tales told by his great-great-grannie, "a seannachie, a folk historian whose job it was to witness". Soft-spoken John Munro (Ross, Skye and Inverness West) confessed that the debate "puts a cold shiver up my spine". Nobody actually said "Ochone. Ochone . . . "
All very moving, but essentially meaningless. So what good did it do? A cynic would point out that it gave Highlands and Islands MSPs something to take back to their voters from an Edinburgh parliament dominated by central-belt preoccupations. It also allowed Jamie Stone to plug a Clearances Memorial Centre, which is being created to attract Scottish exiles to Sutherland. So it was a very Scottish mixture of sloppy sentiment, self- justification and commercialism.
Meanwhile, MSPs are seen doing their proper job, and doing it well, in the Scottish Parliament's committees. The education committee has harried ministers, made civil servants squirm and quangos quake with the relentless investigation of the Higher exams fiasco. The committee has now moved to Lanarkshire to take evidence from five bright young pupils whose lives have been blighted by the failures of their elders.
This was an inspired move, as it showed the parliament out among the people - and listening. As the committee chair Mary Mulligan told the youngsters: "You are a politician's dream."
Their evidence graphically brought home the impact, on an entire generation, of the failure of the system that decides their futures. It also increased the discomfiture of the ministers concerned - and virtually wrote off the political career of Sam Galbraith, the education minister.
Similarly with the investigation of the spiralling costs of the new parliament building and the scrutiny, by various committees, of the Scottish Executive's spending plans for the next four years. The substantial work of the parliament is being done, usually without publicity, in a highly effective committee system.
At the same time, in the main debating chamber, MSPs damage the parliament's image by posturing and point-scoring in front of the TV cameras for two and a half days a week.
Which is the real face of the Scottish Parliament? Unfortunately, like Jekyll and Hyde, we are stuck with both.
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