Caledonia Dreaming

“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” Henrik Ibsen

Life for many Scots is very tough. Rising poverty, particularly impacting the young and most vulnerable. The highest energy bills in Britain and the worst fuel poverty in Europe despite large indigenous energy resources. A large creative sector where many workers are barely able to eke out a living. Innovative start-ups facing glacially slow regulatory hurdles and passive government support. Local city democracy where process and inflexibility marginalise communities and erodes public trust. A green transition that is either partly stalled or looks designed to boost the margins of big incumbents rather than lift the lives of ordinary Scots.

Ten years after the 2014 Independence Referendum vote this wasn’t what anyone asked or hoped for. Whether you wanted the sunlit uplands of an Independent Scotland or renewed vows with the Union, none of the above was on the ballot paper. But here we are. Stuck.

Of course, there are endless explanations and excuses for our plight…Brexit, the Tories, the SNP, Covid, the international situation, Holyrood, Westminster, neo-liberalism, the Labour Party, the Scottish Greens…on and on and on. Largely partisan. All incomplete. None offering a practical positive path ahead.

What is perhaps most peculiar is the jarring dissonance between these problems and the capacity of us, the 5.5 million Scots, and Scotland more widely. Why are things so difficult when we have all the possibilities and solutions in our own hands? And why don’t we change our future accordingly?

Like communities all over Scotland I am surrounded by amazing people of all ages and backgrounds. Doctors, writers, teachers, parents, plumbers, academics, stonemasons, lawyers, students…you name it, we have it locally. We have longer-term residents who understand the history of our neighbourhood. Diverse more recent arrivals bringing new ideas and perspectives. Artists who work here and are inspired by their surroundings. Neighbours starting businesses. Groups helping improve our green spaces. If we had to “run” our neighbourhood we could. But we don’t.

Where I live, we rely upon the City of Edinburgh Council. The council have a new vision for Edinburgh: “City Plan 2030”. This took over six years to produce. In preparing this they received over 2000 pages of feedback but still managed to produce a lengthy, largely unread, and even more largely utopian and unrealistic picture of our future home (e.g. “We are committed to eliminating poverty, ensuring residents have enough money to live on, have access to work, learning and training opportunities and have a good place to live.”). Having just published Edinburgh 2030 the Planning Department is now embarking upon “City Plan 2040”.

Would it not be better…richer…more credible…to engage the communities of Edinburgh to do this 2040 work instead? Who knows our city better than us? Who has more expertise? Who has a greater vested interest in making the city a success than us? Greener. With better transportation. And housing. And schooling. Not as an afterthought as impotent “editors” but as the authors and deeply invested stakeholders that we are. Working with other communities and the council to create a joint plan that we will execute together.

The Arts in Scotland stagger from one crisis to the next. Ten years after our most important cultural icon (the Mackintosh School of Art) in Glasgow first burned it lies in ruins with no coherent prospect of restoration. Paris triumphantly rebuilt Notre Dame in less than half the time (likewise Windsor Castle). On average most workers in the creative industries would be better rewarded stacking shelves full time in Lidl. Our funding processes are so complex some individuals are spending months tackling paperwork with no guarantee of success. Creative Scotland consumes over £8 million annually funding itself. Our art schools churn out hundreds of graduates with virtually zero understanding of how to make a living. This systematically disadvantages those from less prosperous backgrounds.

We do not lack architects. Or project managers. Or historians with understanding of Mackintosh’s craft. We formerly managed the Arts in Scotland with a handful of experts and individual submissions of a few pages. There are modern more democratic ways of doing the same while engaging the wider artistic community. There are many experienced creative people who could demystify how to make a decent living as an artist as part of our academic courses. We can build upon the supportive expertise-rich Screen Scotland model rather than subjecting overloaded impoverished artists to mere bureaucracy. We could democratise the arts by reintegrating creativity into our schools, our workplaces, our communities. This would make our lives happier, our artists more engaged and prosperous and our children’s lives richer.

And how would we pay for this? One large and near-untapped source of wealth in Scotland is renewables. Having already invested billions in Scottish wind energy there is at least twice as much scope again to come. However, this does very little for 5.5 million of us in terms of jobs or community wealth or national prosperity. The potential and prosperity of renewables is bypassing Scotland. Permits yield little “rent”. Community benefits are trivial (while communities onshore suffer disruption and visual impact). The hardware is almost exclusively manufactured outside Scotland. The export network is painful to execute for rural communities. The energy largely flows South. The revenue flows to privately infrastructure, power and upstream producers, many foreign owned.

By way of another renewables example, we have tidal energy where we are falling behind in our international competitiveness and losing out purely due to our own inaction. Getting projects from drawing board to first power is painfully slow (typically 7-12 years versus Canada’s 2 years). The lack of a Scottish stock exchange or a significant investment ecosystem, means there is little access to capital for growing companies in industrial sectors, they must look abroad for investment and the companies are eventually lost to Scotland.  The absence of a long-term Scottish industrial plan not only stifles growth, but it also extinguishes hope.

We don’t lack the raw resources. Nor innovative engineers. Nor the appetite to design and build in Scotland. Nor communities willing to work in genuinely balanced partnerships with the renewables sector. Nor the workforce to sustain this complex network once built. We could turn this system on its head. Drive wider collaboration. Put citizens needs at the centre, rather than those of large corporations. Boost the impact upon the 5.5 million. Accelerate project definition and implementation. Lower our carbon footprint and build national wealth. Transform the lives of the communities who cohabit with the infrastructure. Balance large scale strategic infrastructure with a myriad of small local schemes defined and run for and by communities.  

None of this is easy. Or impossible. Yet much of it has been successfully executed elsewhere. In Norway in the oil and gas sector. In Ireland where the Citizen Assembly wrestles with the biggest and most complex national issues. In Singapore where central planning attracts the brightest and best and relentlessly focuses upon making Singapore a success for all. In British Columbia where the giant Canada LNG export project boosts domestic procurement, indigenous employment, community and national wealth.

In the 2014 Independence Prospectus, much was made of an Independent Scotland “closing gaps” with other small prosperous nations, including Norway, Ireland, Singapore. Regrettably this has not happened. In most regards the gaps grew. Ambition shrank. Leadership behaviours became more parochial, partisan and blinkered. Utopian self-serving “strategy” proliferates while most Scots lives get worse.

The temptation is to return to finger-pointing…Brexit, the Tories, the SNP, Covid, the international situation, Holyrood, Westminster, neo-liberalism, the Labour Party, the Scottish Greens…

But perhaps there is a different response…what if all our institutions started working in service of the 5.5 million of us? And innovatively pulled in our amazing expertise to solve the big (and small) challenges together? What if collaboration and building alliances across organisations and borders was relentlessly and obsessively pursued? What if we unleashed the sleeping capacity in our communities? What if the green transition focussed upon improving 5.5. million lives rather than simply growing balance sheets? What if encouraging our kids to be creative was valued and our creative people could live decent lives? What if we treated the Mac like Notre Dame and it relentlessly rose phoenix-like within a democratised Glasgow city plan? What if Edinburgh (and our other cities) in 2040 were wonderful homes for millions of us because we created them in genuine partnership with local government? What if living in a greener rural environment was good for all communities…because local voices held greatest sway?

We were never given today’s status quo as an option on a ballot paper. We don’t have to aim low. We have the resources and the people and the skills to transform our future. Other nations have achieved this from much more challenging origin points. We don’t have to be mired in finger-pointing. Or accept leadership that cares more about its own internal needs than ours. Or is unwilling or unable to work collaboratively in service of us 5.5. million.

 We are the people. This is our country. Creating a better Scotland for us all need not be a dream.

Neil Gilmour is a former energy industry senior executive recently returned to Scotland having led numerous successful world-scale projects.