Scotland the Brave?

About the Book: 

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’.

Extracts: 

the twentieth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament offers the opportunity to assess a Scotland beyond the narrow politics of devolution. In these pages we therefore address a wider canvas. This includes what has changed and what has not changed over this devolution era; understanding where, and how far, we have come, and what the contours and challenges of the future might look like. Gerry Hassan & Simon Barrow

Some people have a dream; I have a nightmare. It is to find myself locked in a dark, airless nursery cupboard, somewhere in the south of England, with Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Theresa May and Paul Dacre, former editor of the Daily Mail. Neal Ascherson

If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, then we can sure that the wrong question is being asked. Over the past three years it has become ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. It does not include or even allude to Europe. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. The tautologous slogan ‘Leave Means Leave’ is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how. Fintan O’Toole

Scotland has become an international reference point for gender equality policy and for progressive equality policy in the twenty years of devolution. Angela O’Hagan & Talat Yaqoob

Scotland is currently in the grip of a child and adolescent mental health crisis, with frightening implications not only for the children concerned but for the nation as a whole… Scotland urgently needs coherent, well-funded policy-making (not just policy-writing) for this age range. Sue Palmer

the rest of the world now look to us as a source of innovation and inspiration and it may be that our influence can go beyond our own shores. Gerry McCartney

With 10,000 permanent Airbnb’s in Edinburgh, and now over 20 per cent of its housing privately rented, should we be surprised that the city has the largest number of people residing in temporary accommodation, who also stay there for the longest periods. A housing policy that encourages new mid-market rental accommodation and celebrity homeless sleep-outs can never hope to address the real causes of that city’s housing crisis. Douglas Robertson

Contributors:

Neal Ascherson • Jude Barber • John Bone • Miriam Brett • Craig Dalzell • Gillian Easson • Anna Fowlie • Douglas Fraser • Katie Gallogy-Swan • David Goldblatt • Richard Holloway • Lucy Hunter Blackburn • Blair Jenkins • Laura Jones • George Kerevan • Caitlin Logan • Malcolm Maclean • Brian Mark Evans • Michael Marra • Gerry McCartney • Karyn McCluskey • Jim McCormick • James McEnaney • Mairi McFayden • Neil McInroy • Fergus McNeill • Nasar Meer • Anne Mullin • Andrew W Neal • Jemma Neville • Angela O’Hagan • Fintan O’Toole • Lesley Orr • Sue Palmer • Douglas Robertson • Kirstein Rummery •Alan Sinclair • Mike Small • Jim Spence • Catriona Stewart • Andy Summers • Laura Waddell • William Walker • Andy Wightman • Ruth Wushart • Talat Yaqoob

About the Author:

GERRY HASSAN is a writer, thinker and commentator, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Dundee. His primary focus is politics in the UK and Scotland, about which he has written numerous books, including in-depth studies of the Labour Party and SNP, and the creation and progress of the Scottish Parliament. 

He is author of the best-selling and acclaimed Caledonian Dreaming: The Quest for a Different Scotland, published by Luath Press in 2014; Scotland the Bold: How the Nation has Changing and Why There is No Going Back; and co-author of the definitive study of Scottish Labour, The Strange Death of Labour Scotland. He co-edited A Nation Changed?: The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On with Simon Barrow, published by Luath Press in 2017, which is the only study of the SNP’s ten years in office. He has also published the first-ever study of the Labour Party and Britishness: The People’s Flag and the Union Jack, in 2019.

Forthcoming publications include A Better Nation: The Challenges of Scottish Independence (with Simon barrow – Luath Press, 2022), which outlines approaches to the independence debate which are respectful of different views, doubts and ambiguities, asking what kind of society we want to create and how Scotland may want to govern herself. Gerry writes and appears in the media regularly, as well as speaking at events, discussions and conferences in Scotland, the UK and internationally.

SIMON BARROW is Director of the beliefs, ethics and politics think tank Ekklesia. From 2000 to 2005 he was assistant general secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, the official ecumenical body. He has written and contributed to numerous books, recently editing Scotland 2021 (with Mike Small – Bella Caledonia/Ekklesia, 2016), A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On (with Gerry Hassan – Luath Press, 2017) and Scotland the Brave? Twenty Years of Change and the Future of the Nation (with Gerry Hassan – Luath Press, 2019).

Forthcoming publications include A Better Nation: The Challenges of Scottish Independence (with Gerry Hassan – Luath Press 2022). He is also co-founder and chair of the Scottish Football Supporters Association, and lives in Leith, having relocated to Scotland from England in 2010.