Cànan Edein / Language of Eden

A' Rìbhinn.

A' Ghealach.

"Tha sin aon ceum bheag 'son fear,"
mar sin air adhart.

An Cruinne-Cé gu leir, An Corg, Am Bliogh,
Neo-chrìochnachd's a' Thall.

"Tha a' h-uile saoghalan seo dhuibh fhéin,
ach Europa."

A' chiad uair a' togaidh sinn ceum ris
thoir iomradh air anns a' Chànan Edein,

anns an do bhruidhinn bean
a' chiad faclan do nathair.

Venus.

The Moon.

"That's one small step for man,"

and so on.

The whole wide world, Mars, Jupiter,

infinity and beyond.

"All these world's are yours,

except Europa."

When we set foot there for the first time

let us remark upon it in the Language of Eden,

in which the first words spoken
were by a woman to a snake.

This park

We've not been
in this park before,
my daughter and I.

We laugh
as the spokes
of our bicycle wheels
stir up and unsweep
the piles of autumn leaves.

Their colours swirl
beneath the cauldron sky,
and the shifting mosaic of days,
rearranges itself into another season.

Her birthday is soon.
I think about what to get her,
and then suddenly I remember,
I have been here before,

in this park,
before she was born,
before her brothers were born,
once, with my wife,
following the treatment,
the day she felt a sharp pain in her stomach,
and we knew that cycle of treatment had failed,
and we braced ourselves for a different future,

but we've not been
in this park before
together,
my daughter and I.

Laniakea

Kick the tin of confetti over the cliff.
Watch. The wind whips it up.
Watch the updraft celebrate nuptials
that never happened,
nuptials between no-one
in the nowhere past the precipice' brink.
Watch the wind take those little scraps
dancing off into the distance.
Imagine written on each
are the hopes and dreams and memories
of an entire world.

All our riches are borrowed from oblivion.
Distant cosmic cataclysms are their mint.
We raise our telescopes to the sky
and lay beams of light across the earth
for neutron stars to strum across the epochs
but our retinas remain a precipice
beyond which we cannot pass. We see stars
strewn across the abyss of indifference,
galaxies thronging along its sinews,
and caught in the folds of its membranes
as they are stretched over the palpitations
that heave the universe into being,
as though it was an animal
as eager and desparate to live as us.

We are the animal that lies, and thinks
the world must change to fit our lies.
The only words we are capable of hearing
must carry the hallmark of our deceit,
as we insist the world measures up
to our abject inability to describe it,
as we condescend to the universe
by making jewelry from atoms of gold
forged in the death of stars.

We can no longer lie when we see this.
We can no longer lie when we behold
Laniakea.

Take off your trinkets,
your embellishments,
and drop them to the ground.
Dishevel your hair.
Derange all ornament.
Tarnish the silver,
and beat the gold.
Pull a blade across the canvass
where you thought
you caught a likeness.
Throw your stool
through the stained glass
of your most cherished
and reassuring dogma.
Confound all the theories.
Rip up all the maps.
Stand naked and alone
at the edge of the precipice.
Cast those lies to the wind.
Toss them like confetti over the cliff.
Let the wind take them where it will.
Embrace the nuptials of nothingness.
Become no-one and everyone,
living nowhere and everywhere,
owning nothing and everything,
in the celestial commonwealth
of Laniakea.

An t-seanais / the whisper

Is mo dhuin' as fhad' a-mach an dàimh
mo dhuin' as fhaisg' an dàimh gu dearbh,
nuair a tha damh-féidh droma air astar
dlùth-dhàimh, gu leòr mar a chluinn e
am fathann saighd' ann an cluais aige,
teannachadh an cian bàis
nas dhlùth fiù 's dathan fighte ri chéile,
taobh ri taobh, a h-aon leth ri an té eile,
anns an dreas' as ghaolach
air an gruagach àlainn agamsa
anns mo ghàirdeanan
airson bu cheart cho math leam
a thog mo gràbhailt's màilleach as
a chaidir ann an dlùth-ghabhail mhór
an t-saoghal, an cruinne-cé gu léir
air los gum innseadh mi am meud mo ghaol
tro falt dorcha
coltach ri a' sgàil-roinn na h-oidhche,
air a dhealaich ann an seanais
air Oidhche Shamhna seo, an t-snàthad
d' an t-suil a bhith a h-uile bliadhna
seachad throimhpe air a' chrìoch ùine
an t-suil leis an do ghabh am Foghar
cuimse air an cridhe Samhraidh
le craobhan lom a dhuilleach
a' fhleist a saighead.

My most distant relative 

is indeed my next of kin 

when the wild stag 

on the distant ridge 

is close enough 

to hear me whisper in its ear

the rumour of an arrow,
collapsing the remoteness of death,

closer even than colours 

woven together side by side

one right next to the other, 

in a much-loved dress

my beautiful long haired maiden 

wears in my arms,

for I would find it so right 

to take off my helmet 

and chain mail, and take 

in a great close embrace 

the whole world round, 

the entire earth,

so that I could tell her 

the size of my love, whispered 

through a parting in her dark hair,
like night's dark partition,

this All Hallows' Eve

the needle whose eye 

all years pass through

at the end of time,
the eye with which Autumn takes aim
at the heart of Summer
with trees stripped of leaves
to fletch his arrow.

Beyond Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein has been sacked, repudiated, disowned, ostracised, and abandoned as a consequence of his sickening, coercive and abusive attitude to the women over whom he could exert some pathetic semblance of power. He may face a criminal conviction.

But it mustn't stop there. This will achieve precisely nothing if the same moral yardstick with which we evaluate his conduct is not applied to other men in similar positions. This means we need to be equal in our condemnation of Trump, for example, and men like him.

This isn't straightforward. Trump is an easy and obvious target, but Kim Masters points out, in Fighting 'The Gawker Effect’ in the Wake of Weinstein, "the lengths to which a deep-pocketed subject will go to shut down a negative story." A criminal conviction is necessary if we don't want to allow wealthy individuals to simply litigate and settle their way out of being accountable.

The depth of the subject's pockets is a key observation here, because male privilege and economic privilege are interconnected. Patriarchy makes men disposable economic objects governed by appetites manipulated and degraded so that their acquiescence may be bought with the objectification and subordination of women to satisfy those appetites. It is part of an economic system of privilege and exploitation that affects both men and women.

And the movie industry is one of the way this appetite for objectification is fed, as Sara Polley describes in The Men You Meet Making Movies. "Harvey Weinstein may be the central-casting version of a Hollywood predator, but he was just one festering pustule in a diseased industry." As screenwriter Scott Rosenberg puts it, "Everybody-fucking-knew [...] [the] courage [of the women making the recent revelations] only hangs a lantern on my shame."

As I mentioned in my article Cannon Fodder and Comfort Women, "[Weinstein's] behaviour [was] tacitly accepted as part of [a] system of male privilege and entitlement. It would provide an example to other, less powerful men, about how they can distract themselves from their own disposability: treat women as disposable sexual objects. Predators like Weinstein help normalise the pathologies of a system of [economic] exploitation." The very fact we are now talking about something that has been common knowledge for decades indicates this system is in crisis. We must now press on and dismantle it entirely.

The effort takes its toll. As Rebecca Solnit observes in her article The Fall of Harvey Weinstein Should be a Moment to Challenge Extreme Masculinity, in the Guardian, "this past week was not a good week for women." Several of my friends are noticeably fatigued by the relentlessness of the misogyny that has been revealed in recent weeks. It doesn't matter that these revelations are concerned with events that took place over a number of decades. We are confronting them, and the system they are part of, now. This is incredibly tiring. Recent days have been exhausting.

But remember, nothing in particular has been revealed recently that changes what we already knew in general. We have not learned anything fundamentally new. We always knew about the system. The news lately has just been concerned with a few instances of it in operation. As Sarah Polley observes, "the only thing that shocked most people in the film industry about the Harvey Weinstein story was that suddenly, for some reason, people seemed to care."

All that is really new is our conviction that we simply will not put up with it anymore. All that is new is our collective, sustained and definitive rejection of what was previously tolerated. It is no longer acceptable in general, and so specific instances of it are being rooted out in particular. This process must continue unabated.

And if it is no longer acceptable in general, the system of collusion that supported it is in crisis. The blind eye yields to the spotlight of scrutiny. The nudge and the wink connote membership of a club no-one wants to belong to anymore.

So take heart: that feeling of exhaustion is a righteous fatigue. It comes from the effort of millions rising from their knees and raising their fist in defiance and saying "no more." And when the dust settles, we will see that it is not just men we have brought down, it is the system that protected their reputations to preserve privileges that extend far beyond the advantages they took as individuals.

Da pacem, Domine

Da pacem, Domine,
in diebus nostris
quia non est alius
qui pugnet pro nobis
nisi tu Deus noster.

Grant us peace, Lord,

in our days, 

since there is no other

who will fight for us 

except you our God.

Or rather,

if none will fight for us 

but You, Lord, our God, 

we ask of You only this:

that we need not ask 

that of You at all,

and so both You and we 

may live our days in peace,

and when the end of days has come,

You will be unpractised in punishment,

and we will know the depth of Your sadness

when the first time You raise Your hand

on our behalf, it is against us.

Cannon fodder and comfort women

If we seek to dismantle the patriarchal system of male privilege and entitlement that results in sexual harassment of women, one of the things we must do is encourage men to reject their own disposable status, for which patriarchy offers that privilege and entitlement as compensation.

The revelations about Harvey Weinstein have once more concentrated public discourse on male behaviour towards women. We find ourselves once again asking how to stop the endemic abuse and harassment of which Weinstein is just a very public and high profile example. It has been said he represents just the "tip of the iceberg," but perhaps we should be casting our similes in terms of pyramids rather than icebergs.

Because patriarchy is structural. It is fundamentally a system of divide and rule that exploits the oldest and most obvious division that exists in society, the one between men and women. The frustration men experience as a result of their subordination in society's power structures is misdirected by patriarchy into a spurious sense of thwarted entitlement towards women as a mechanism for maintaining those power structures. Men subordinate women in response to their own subordination.

To be clear, I would just like to anticipate the condescension and outrage of the self-satisfied toxic sociologists who explain everything with reference to some variety of "masculinity" to establish their feminist credentials and earn their ally cookies. Of course I condemn unreservedly the behaviour I am trying to explain. In trying to explain it I am in no way condoning it. I am trying to find a useful description that helps to eliminate it. I find the language of "toxic masculinity" unhelpful in this respect. We would not discuss "toxic femininity" when we really mean internalised misogyny. We need a better way of discussing the male equivalent. Sometimes we should just say "misogyny." Perhaps sometimes, when considering male violence against the self rather than others, a concept of internalised discrimination rather than "toxic masculinity" is more helpful. 

Language is important. We are accustomed to saying that men like Weinstein are abusing a position of power. However, men don't do what they do because they are powerful. They do it to assert power from a position of perceived powerlessness. The actions of someone like Weinstein are not the actions of a confident, powerful man. These actions are pathetic. They originate in an experience of the fundamental male powerlessness of being disposable. Patriarchy provides them with an opportunity to assert power over women to compensate them for their disposability. This maintains their subordination to the power structures they themselves are victims of and to which they are expendable. Men treat women as a consumable item because they themselves are consumables.

Weinstein seems a particularly egregious example because he himself is supposedly a beneficiary rather than a victim of society's power structures, and therefore, according to this thesis, should not require compensation to gain his acquiescence. Why does the man who has everything require compensation? But predators like Weinstein serve a certain purpose. While they are tolerated they legitimise and give permission to other men to behave in this way. They are part of the system. As Emma Thomson said in her recent interview on the subject, in the "olden days" his behaviour would have been described as "pestering." It would have been tacitly accepted as part of this system of male privilege and entitlement. It would provide an example to other, less powerful men, about how they can distract themselves from their own disposability: treat women as disposable sexual objects. Predators like Weinstein help normalise the pathologies of a system of exploitation. He is being pilloried now not because we have just found out about his behaviour, but because the system he is part of itself is in crisis and is being rejected. 

We see this pattern most acutely where men are most expendable: during conflict. Whether it is the "comfort women" abused by Japanese soldiers, the various rape camps set up by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, or more recent instances where rape and sexual abuse are used as weapons of war and genocide to dehumanize, demoralise and subdue a population, we see men being distracted from their own disposability by the objectification of women as sexual entertainment.

This pattern extends into society in general. Whether militarily or economically, the power structures in society mediated by patriarchy cast us in the roles of comfort women and cannon fodder. There is no fundamental difference between the workplace and the front line in this regard. What interests me is the extent to which these roles are connected: the extent to which one would not exist without the other. I have written elsewhere about the fault line through society. We find it at the front line, we find it on the picket line, we find it in the bottom line of the annual profit statement. This is one more example where we are placed in opposition to each other on the lower tiers of a power structure to ensure we continue to support the higher tiers.

So how do men gain the power they need without having to demean others to do so? Reject your disposability. Understand your own worth. Define yourself by your own interests, ambitions, curiosity, talent, not by the purpose you can serve on behalf of someone else. Realise you offer something more than what can be achieved with a dildo, a sperm bank and a pay check. Believe your woman when she says she loves you. Stop thinking this is some elaborate charade you don't fully understand related to some role you play. Stop thinking of yourself as disposable, interchangeable, expendable. Acknowledge your secret self-loathing. Confront your internalised discrimination and sexism. Cease to be cannon fodder. Cease seeking comfort women. Forgive yourself, and finally begin to live.

Why do unionists lie?

I read a tweet today that said Scottish Labour need to lie because there is a simple answer to all their concerns which they are ideologically incapable of considering as long as they remain dogmatically unionist, which is, of course, Independence. This single tweet encapsulates much that is wrong with our politics. Yes, unionists lie. This is not why unionists lie, although superficially it makes a lot of sense.

We sometimes struggle to believe that unionist opposition to Scottish government policies, and criticism of its performance in delivering them, is genuine, because we understand all too well their ulterior motives for criticism. We know all the reasons they have to be disingenuous wreckers.

But we must be very careful about this. We run the risk of making assumptions as unfounded as the unionists' when we treat everything they say as mere a pretext to try to undermine the credibility of a constitutional position to which they are implacably opposed and the government is in favour of. Just because they are often disingenuous does not mean they are always disingenuous, and every government needs genuine opposition scrutiny, which must be welcomed. Our democracy is healthy not because it tolerates dissent, but because it celebrates it. The biggest insult of disingenuous, unconstructive opposition is not to government, but to those voices who would raise real concerns that are drowned out by slogans and sound bites.

On the one hand the people are let down by an opposition if everything it says is just a tribalistic power play and it has nothing constructive to offer. On the other hand there are many unionists whose concerns are sincere, whose opinions are well informed, and whose contributions should be welcomed. We should always bear in mind we are all wrong, both those who agree with us and those who disagree. No-one has all the pieces of the puzzle and we need to work together to solve it. Don't believe anyone who says they have all the answers.

The problem is that all to often we currently confuse the content of our politics with the context in which they find expression. Independence is not a "simple answer." It is a possible context in which we can grapple with the difficult questions that form the content of our politics. Neither is the Union is a "simple answer." It is another possible context. There are no simple answers, and the status quo is not exempt from that observation. I prefer Independence for a variety of reasons, but I can easily find myself agreeing with unionists on a range of issues that are common to both. We need to make a clear distinction between the content and the context of our politics.

So, unionists are not lying to deliberately deprive us of some panacea that would otherwise solve all our problems and put them out of a job. At least, not all of them are ;-). This isn't the reason unionists lie. No, they lie for a fundamentally different reason. They are lying to themselves.

Unionism is based on fundamentally flawed premises. Truth must therefore remain elusive and inaccessible. It assumes:

1: Identity is a zero sum. Our affiliations are finite and must therefore be invested in a single identity to be rendered most effective. I have written at length about the dangers inherent in this assumption in "the vortex."

2: Identity has some instrumental or intercessionary purpose. It is the basis for collective action to address common problems on behalf of individual needs. We must organise our institutions in relation to identity, for example, national parliaments, etc.

3: Identity is linear. The individual is connected to the whole by a single straight line. This line joins each human being to the species, each person to the planet. The only way to express your common humanity is through the identity assigned to you by the unionist.

All of these assumptions are wrong.

They are assumptions that are shared by many opponents of unionism as well, when they mistakenly believe the best way of opposing it is to play the role unionism has cast them in.

Item 3 makes the unionist the gate keeper of solidarity. The line becomes a set of scales, with the union purported to represent some perfect balance between the mass of individuals and their various needs, hopes and fears on the one hand, and all the common challenges we all face as a species on the other. The unionist sits herself at the pivot and claims to be the only way to reconcile these considerations, and, through the various agencies established by her unionist identity, usurps all other perspectives. There can be only one pivot.

But identity is not linear. I can celebrate our common humanity without having to write a letter to my UN representative, appointed by my unionist UK government, for permission to do so. I don't need permission to collaborate with someone in another country when writing a song. Only the most repressive regimes would say I did, and in doing so, would be, and historically have been, unionist regimes. There are many paths and routes we can find to each other, and then follow back to ourselves again, there are many affiliations that can emerge and come into focus and fade once more into obscurity in the shifting simultaneity of our many interactions with each other. Identity is circular, not linear. It is this circularity of identity the opponents of unionism celebrate and unionists abhor, because the gatekeeper of solidarity hates to be bypassed and become irrelevant.

Unionism offers a "one size fits all" solution, which is why it can only conceive of the alternatives that compete with it as "one size fits all" solutions, and insists on criticising them on that basis. This is why they dismiss their opponents as nationalists: because unionism is nationalism. This is the logical template their own position imposes on all others.

Let me say that again: the opposite of unionism is not nationalism. Unionism is nationalism.

Unionism is a form of narcissism that finds a mirror in all its opponents. It is no accident that all of the worst examples of "nationalism" that unionists cite when trying to slander their opponents by association were, in fact, unionist varieties of nationalism, all seeking to impose uniformity on a region "identified" as a suitable candidate for a union, and seeking to consume all affiliations within the "vortex" of that unionist zero sum identity, that aggressive, expansionist, imperialist identity which preconditions the perceptions and understanding of all who profess it.

The only logically coherent position a unionist can take without being nationalist is a unified world government. This is not the principal position advocated in London and Madrid these days.

The linear and intercessionary nature of identity assumed by unionism is dangerous. It allows for the possibility of politics becoming a secular priesthood, for one or a small clique of charismatic authority figures to presume to speak on behalf of everyone, annointed in some mystical way by the "will of the people." That never ends well. Unfortunately we are living in another age in which history's diverse spasms has vomited up another set of unprincipled criminal unionist charlatans setting themselves up to speak on our behalf on the subject of, for example, Brexit.

There is only one union I can thole, and it is unqualified and unconditional. I embrace the variety of human experience. I love all its shades and sexualities, every dance and melody, each opinion and its opposite when sincerely believed and argued, and I do not find this incompatible with Scottish Independence, quite the opposite, it is in Indrpendence that I find my circular identity, and celebrate my connection with all things and all people, and reject the sterile doctrines of the unionist.

Learned helplessness

Scotland leads the world in one thing: learned helplessness.

We call it "the cringe" and it has been a feature of Scottish life and culture for about 300 years.

It has persisted so long it has fractured our collective mind, manifesting itself in Caledonian anti-syzygy and spawning creatures such as Hogg's justified sinner and Stevenson's Mr Hyde. The contradictions and cognitive dissonances of learned helplessness cannot continue for 300 years without contributing to the development of some interesting pathologies, and Scottish society displays these in abundance.

Why is this important? Because the world can learn from us. We have been a laboratory for the world, a neglected one perhaps, one where the experiment in powerlessness has been allowed to run unsupervised and out of control, but one where that experiment has continued until angry young men on football terraces feel compelled to borrow and wave flags from foreign conflicts, like Palestine and Israel, just to feel able and empowered by emblems potent and valid enough to articulate the artificially intensified hatred they feel for their rivals as a consequence of their impotence. Scotland has been a pressure cooker of powerlessness and the world can benefit from sampling the taste.

I realise of course there are aspects of poverty, alienation, and disenfranchisement involved in the pathologies of powerlessness that are common to all too many societies. Nevertheless, Scotland has perfected its own uniquely deranged cocktail of self-loathing and has been serving up the same recipe for 300 years now, ever since "the brightest prospect a Scotsman ever saw is the high road leading him to England."

Imagine a future 300 years from now. The Kushner dynasty has reigned uninterrupted over the radioactive wastelands of half the globe. Donald XVI sits on the throne. Dissent is not just crushed. It is inconceivable. The people have been reprogrammed by fear, hatred, hunger, mutual suspicion, and self-loathing, to accept the self-contradictory dogma that sustains and legitimises the regime. Hope is not just futile, it is ridiculous, a matter of scorn and derision. It is immediately poisoned by the cringe.

This world, this dystopia, owes Scotland a huge debt, for we provided the prototype for the highly effective and contagious cringe it needs now to survive, without which it would surely descend into chaos. This debt will last long after the last book on Maxwell's electromagnetism or Kelvin's thermodynamics has been burned, long after the last television set has been smashed and the last telephone line cut, long after anti-biotic resistant bacteria have spread in epidemics across continents. Scotland's last gift to the world, as a few hundred million survivors shuffle through the rituals of survival in the post-apocalyptic desert they are bequeathed, will be the knowledge that they deserve it all.

Fascists love learned helplessness. They tell you it is your consent to whatever they propose. Then they tell you your consent, as they have contrived it, is irrevocable once given. They take the acquiescence of a fatigued and frightened people and their yearning for respite, and offer a path of least resistance and call it choice, or the "will of the people," or some other meaningless formula, and then insist that once that path is taken there is no turning back. It is a self-perpetuating system that continually generates the illusion of consent from exhaustion and confusion.

I saw an incredibly text-book example of the cringe today on social media. Gerry Hassan reported a conversation he had today in his local shop about last night's football result (Scotland beat Slovakia 1-0) with someone.

Gerry: What do you think of the result last nite?
Chap: I don’t know the result. Take it we lost.
Gerry: We won.
Chap: Just assumed we lost and were rubbish.
Gerry: They were pretty impressive. Team is on a roll.
Chap (said sarcastically): That’s what happens when you are in a union.
Gerry: Obviously.
Chap: And look at that mess in Catalonia. That’s self-determination for you.

"Just assumed we lost and were rubbish"

A t-shirt for us all to wear as we fall in line with the death march to the future the fascists are preparing for us, as we stumble on staring at the heels of the person in front, lacking the courage and imagination to challenge our learned helplessness, yearning for a quiet life even if that ends up being just the edge of a mass grave and bullet in the back of the head.

"Just assumed we lost and were rubbish"

The future is not a boot stamping on a face forever. The future is just inexhaustible reserves of cringe. 2014 was Scotland's 1984. The matter is settled. Eat your cereal.

"Assumed"

The opposite of courage and imagination. The opposite of curiosity. The intellect's capitulation. Its abdication and surrender. The abandonment of our faculties to the mercy of those who despise us. Don't ask any questions. Don't expect any answers. Just assume the worst case scenario and you won't be disappointed. Jump before you're pushed.

"Lost"

The opposite of confidence, knowledge, hope, direction. The opposite of a sense of place. The opposite of a geographic and historical location. The opposite of context. The opposite of receiving a cultural inheritance to which you can contribute and leave as a legacy to future generations. The atomised individual's apology.

"Rubbish"

The opposite of self-esteem, "that sense o' worth and pith o' self," ambition, value. Trash. Scum. Filth. Incapable of anything worth the effort.

"And look at that mess in Catalonia. That’s self-determination for you."

Not just Scottish Independence, because Catalonia isn't Scotland, no, the abstract concept of self-determination itself is a mess. Oh, if only there was a strong authority figure this person could turn to, a charismatic leader who could redeem all the stupidity and selfishness of us unworthy people, with our disastrous notions of "self-determination."

It's time Europe became a proper democracy

The situation in Barcelona will have ramifications beyond Iberia. I am not talking about the example Catalonia sets for other secessionist movements. I am talking about the fault lines in the logic of Europe's institutions that lie exposed when the EU Commission feels compelled to defend a government that deploys paramilitary force against its own people.

I am talking about its statements that seem to place the right of the government to send in police to beat the people over the right of the people to choose how they are governed. I am talking about its support for a constitution even when it has been invalidated by the violence used to defend it against the very people it is supposed to protect.

One possible outcome of this contradiction at the heart of Europe is the development of tension between the EU Parliament and Commission. The parliament surely must appreciate how yesterday's events have altered the context of discussion, shifted the "moral horizon," in ways the commission seems unable.

Parliamentarians are elected by and speak for the people. The can articulate the widespread disgust at the state-sanctioned antics of the Guardia Civil. Some were present among crowds under fire from rubber bullets. If you have a problem about this you should write to your MEP, not a commissioner.

Commissioners are appointed by and speak for the governments. It is inevitable they will adopt a constitutionalist view. They are civil servants. The take their instructions from the Council of Europe, the heads of government. They are a "government club," not representatives or delegates of the people.

Therefore I will follow the debate on the situation in Catalonia in the European Parliament that has been called for Wednesday with interest, in particular the contribution of Alyn Smith.

One thing that is revealed by recent developments is that if sovereignty is to be pooled and shared in Europe for our common interests it must be a matter of parliamentary process, not technocratic bureaucracy, because that is the proper forum in which the peoples of Europe can embrace each other in solidarity and with joint and meaningful commitment to democracy. Parliament is where the peoples of Europe find common cause, while the Commission is merely an extension of the corporate boardroom into the public sphere.

Over reliance on the Commission risks merely amplifying frustrations and resentments with the governments that appoint it. Barcelona, ironically, shows us it is time Europe became a proper democracy. Maybe it is time for another tennis court oath to define the times we live in.

Homage to Catalonia

Thugs in balaclavas assault women and children and vandalise the apparatus of democratic self-expression while being applauded by fascist spectators and supporters. They do this with complete impunity, however, because these are state-sanctioned thugs. They are Spanish police disrupting the Catalan Independence referendum today, the first day of October, 2017.

How is this any of my business? I can feel sympathy for Spaniards who see Catalan Independence as the dismemberment of their "indivisible" country. I can appreciate their deep sadness at the apparent violation of the 1978 constitution that reconciled a country recovering from dictatorship.

Friends of my grandfather, Red Clydesiders, fought and died in Spain fighting fascism. I might not be here if he had been able to make the same journey. My country, Scotland, currently suffers a constitutional arrangement that might be interpreted as a relic, a mere stratagem and temporary expedient, from the War of the Spanish Succession that has persisted because of a series of circumstances (the Hanoverian state's survival of it's mid-18th century crisis, and so on) that were not inevitable. So in some sense I feel I have a stake in today's developments in Spain.

But I take an interest not as a Scot, or a Spaniard, or a Catalan, but, like my grandfather and his friends, as a human. The stake I have in the outcome of this project lies in its broader implications and ramifications for us all. I am not just seeking a development abroad that helps legitimise my hopes in domestic politics. I am not just finding in Catalonia an example Scotland might follow in its own journey towards the restoration of its ancient rights and privileges of self-determination. I am not simply acknowledging and admiring the ample "collons" of those struggling for their own self-determination and wishing such determination was more in evidence here. I am seeing universal forces confront each other on the streets and in the polling stations of Barcelona and Girona and all across Catalonia.

"Una, Grande y Libre" was the motto of fascist Spain, and the doctrine of Spain's indivisibility provides an opportunity for francoist nostalgia which we see expressed by the small number of right wing extremists offering nazi salutes in support of Madrid's uniformed thugs on the streets of Barcelona.

When the state becomes an end in itself rather than a vehicle for the aspirations of the people it becomes a breeding ground for monsters. We see unionists, in both Spain and Scotland, villifying peaceful independence activists while failing to repudiate the fascists in their own ranks. No matter how obnoxious the individuals and organisations that find fellowship and common cause with them are, they serve a purpose, and so the unionists just hold their nose and turn a blind eye. And so the far right is emboldened, and grows, and thrives in the shadow of the union.

But the 20th century offers blood-soaked testimony that if we tolerate this while the fascists are weak, we only have to defeat it once they have grown strong. The governments of a European Union formed as a bulwark against fascism and a guarantor of the legitimate aspirations of its peoples must unequivocally condemn Madrid as a matter of existential necessity.