The Dream Shall Never Die by Alex Salmond

Author:Alex Salmond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Day Fifty-Four: Monday 4 August

Rehearsal for tomorrow’s TV debate with Alistair Darling. Things are not right.

The format is not what it should be, neither is there agreement on strategy. However, I have accepted the prevailing view that I should tone down my normal combative style.

The day starts with a beautiful service in Glasgow Cathedral to commemorate the Great War. The logic being that Commonwealth representatives would find it easier to attend the day after the Games.

I sit beside Kate Adie, who performs one of the readings, a good choice given that she has seen the reality of conflict close up in a way in which very few politicians have.

I believe the UK government is in for a well-merited disappointment in the impact of these commemorations over the next four years in terms of Scots’ attitude to the union. In a supremely crass comment in 2012, Cameron described the anniversary as an event to be celebrated ‘like the Diamond Jubilee’. For most people – indeed just about everyone with an ounce of sense – this is no celebration and it is not at all like the Jubilee.

Crasser still, Downing Street briefings of the time directly related the commemorations to the referendum. For example, Patrick Wintour’s report in the Guardian described the government view of the anniversary as ‘another chance to commemorate Britishness’.

The Scottish government have planned an appropriate and respectful series of commemorations for the next four years which try to reflect the horrendous cost to Scottish communities of the Great War, as well as the bravery of fighting men and the sacrifice of individual families. Decimation literally means removal of one-tenth. In many Scottish rural communities, the men of the official fighting age of eighteen to forty were decimated three or four times over.

The anniversary is being studied in schools across the country, with close emphasis placed on local and personal connections. Whatever the impact on this new generation, as they understand the full horror of the Great War, it will not be gung-ho for the union. If an appreciation of Britishness depends upon commemorating this bloody carnage ‘like the Diamond Jubilee’ then the unionist cause is truly and irrevocably finished.

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