Imagine a Country . . .
First published in Imagine a Country
​ed. Val McDermid & Jo Sharp (Canongate, 2020)
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Scotland is a country whose politics have been, and continue to be, in part defined by distance: by the few hundred miles that separate us from London, and by the tensions, disappointments and misunderstandings that build within that space. For many, those miles seem longer now than ever before.
Yet Scotland has its own questions of distance to content with. It is, after all, a lopsided country, in which people and power are concentrated in one wide band of the Central Lowlands. For those who live outside that region — particularly those who live in rural places — the relationship between geography and political agency is doubly clear. To be far from centres of power is to feel, and often to be, without power. It is to feel marginal.
Though there are nearly twice as many people living in rural Scotland as in the city of Edinburgh, the broad dispersal of those people means that the voice of any one community is diluted. It is hard for them to be heard. But rural communities are vulnerable, always. They are vulnerable to decisions that are made elsewhere, without such places in mind. They are vulnerable to extractive economic activity that draws wealth and resources away, without giving anything back. They are vulnerable to depopulation, and the endless pull of the cities. They are vulnerable to a mindset that sees rural problems as local and urban ones as national.
Where we centre our political imagination matters. It makes a difference. If the problems of rural Scotland are considered peripheral to the national conversation, then we will continue to recreate them, to perpetuate damage. If politics is seen as something that happens in the cities and is dispersed outward — the old, colonial model — then we are getting it wrong. And there are urgent reasons to do otherwise, to look again.
As climate change and environmental degradation become priorities, belatedly, for decision-makers, then what happens away from the cities will have to be understood, again belatedly, as a matter of significance for everyone. Land use and land ownership; agricultural practices; energy production; conservation: these are not just local issues, they are global ones. But the importance of environmental questions does not mean that answers must be found elsewhere and then imposed on rural places. That, again, is just repeating the old mistakes.
Taking seriously such questions, as surely we must, means moving beyond traditional models of power. Changing our country’s relationship with its land — reducing the damage that we cause — means listening to those people, those communities, who live closest to that land. It is they who know it best, and it is they who feel themselves responsible, not just for their places, but to them.
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I imagine a country in which that sense of responsibility to place, as well as to people, could help guide how politics is done. I imagine a country in which power does not flow from the centre outward — wherever you imagine that centre to be — but, rather, from the ground up. I imagine a country whose margins are no longer marginalised, and whose geographical edges are no longer edged out of political discourse. I imagine a country whose rural communities are central to its national concerns.