the reinvention of scotland?
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The Reinvention of Scotland?Philip Schlesinger aa Professor of Film and Media Studies andDirector of the Stirling Media Research Institute,University of Stirling; Professor of Media andCommunication at the University of Oslo.Published online: 29 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Philip Schlesinger (2000) The Reinvention of Scotland?,Political Communication, 17:4, 313-318, DOI: 10.1080/10584600050178898
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Political Communication, 17:313–318, 2000Copyright ã 2000 Taylor & Francis1058-4609/00 $12.00 + .00
The Reinvention of Scotland?
PHILIP SCHLESINGER
Keywords political journalism, parliamentary journalism, Scottish mass media, na-tional identity, civil society, Scottish public sphere
On September 11, 1997, the referendum on Scottish devolution produced a resoundingmajority for the creation of a Scottish Parliament with extensive powers, including thevariation of income tax. The Edinburgh legislature, which was finally installed in May1999, has competencies in many key areas of domestic lawmaking. Westminster’s main“reserved” powers under the Scotland Act of 1998 are the constitution, macro-economicsand finance, foreign policy, social security, and citizenship. Devolution to Scotland, Wales,and Northern Ireland, together with the UK’s first directly elected mayor of London andreforms of the upper House of Parliament (the Lords), is changing the political landscapeand the nature of bargaining between political centers. This displacement of powers is partof a wider constitutional revolution that is challenging the UK’s centralist state. It hasopened up the “the English Question.” Some think that present change will necessarily leadeither to a fully federal constitution or, alternatively, to the breakup of the United Kingdom,as the strains of asymmetrical government become too great.
Inevitably, such fundamental—if incomplete—constitutional reform is raising ques-tions about political communication and how this relates to the more complex divisionof powers and identity claims of the UK. The question of how media handle constitu-tional issues is being posed in a quite distinctive way, because they are faced with howto report on peaceful, negotiated change. Of course, “the constitution” (famously un-written) has been on the UK agenda previously. To cite some well-known 20th centuryexamples: There have been two world wars requiring a national rallying to the flag anddefense of the realm, and the taking of special powers by the state; the post–First WorldWar Irish secession, fracturing the Union; the General Strike of 1926, deemed a threatto the state; the Abdication Crisis of 1936, concerning the status and continuity of theCrown; and the long-running Northern Ireland crisis—“internal war” by another name.Looked at this way, there we can reread media history through the reporting (and fic-tionalization) of constitutional crisis. We can also begin to create a typology of therange of possible mediated representations of constitutional change and their underlyingconditions.
Philip Schlesinger is Professor of Film and Media Studies and Director of the Stirling MediaResearch Institute, University of Stirling. He is also Professor of Media and Communication at theUniversity of Oslo.
Address correspondence to Philip Schlesinger, Stirling Media Research Institute, Universityof Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Why Scotland?
In this brief paper, I focus on Scotland, the nation whose demands for autonomy withinthe UK (and in some quarters for independence from the British state) have really driventhis process of change. During the time I have lived in Scotland, I have come to appre-ciate the interesting problem of the “nation without a state,” one that resonates else-where, notably in Wales, Quebec, Catalonia, and the Basque Country. I have been drawnto analyze political communication in Scotland because I have a substantial citizen in-volvement in the place, because I work theoretically and empirically on questions ofnationalism and national identity (principally in the wider European Union context), andbecause it is simply a fascinating laboratory for the political sociologist. As I brieflydescribe here, Scotland in the past few years has offered the rare chance to observe theprocess of inventing new institutions, supercharged with high aspirations embedded inthe political discourse.
Until the union of the English and Scots parliaments in 1707, Scotland was a sepa-rate state (although the crown had already been shared for a century). It was the incor-poration of Scotland into the new union that led to the creation of “Great Britain.” Sincethe mid 19th century, the question of “home rule” for Scotland has been on the politicalagenda. My own research, however, comes out of the much more recent pressures forpolitical change of the last 30 years or so, and more particularly the pressures for reformdating from the late 1980s. During that time, Scots nationalists have pressed for inde-pendence (latterly “in Europe”), and the more flexible unionists have opted for “devolu-tion” as the contemporary version of “home rule.” For some, devolution has been anundisguised tactic for keeping the union in being; for others, it has offered a genuineroute to meet the aspirations of Scotland’s distinct “civil society.”
I have called this brief paper “The Reinvention of Scotland?” because it raises anecessary question. To what extent does the new political status have a transformingeffect? The restoration of the Scottish Parliament after 300 years is a matter of greatnational symbolism as well as of practical politics. Symbolically, an institution of statehas been recreated, albeit with a subordinate status to Westminster. In practical terms,the bureaucratic politics of Scotland—a territory run for more than a century through adepartment of state called the Scottish Office—has been replaced with electoral politicsand with an administration called the Scottish Executive. Scotland has therefore beenreborn as a more complete polity, bringing into a different form the high degree ofautonomy that it has largely enjoyed since union.
My interest lies in the communicative dimension of the institutionalization of a newpolitical system since 1997. How does communicative space reconfigure, both in thedevolved nation and in the wider UK state? What processes of invention have to occur inthe media and ICT age when you replace bureaucratic politics with democracy in anancient nation? How inventive can civil servants, politicians, and media schooled incenturies of Scottish-Britishness be? What was the role of civil society in bringing aboutchange? How far can aspirations for radical democracy go, and how do news media fit in?
The Research
This article is based on an often ethnographic study of press, broadcasting, and politicsconducted since 1996 that seeks to draw out the implications of constitutional changefor political communication in a British state without a written constitution. The workhas been conducted with my Stirling University colleagues David Miller and WilliamDinan. Its central aim has been to track and analyze the emergence of three key ele-
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ments of the developing political communication system in Scotland: first, the rise ofa new framework for the practice of lobbying the Scottish Executive and Parliament;second, the evolution of the rules and practices governing political coverage of the Scot-tish Executive and Parliament; and, third, changes in the approach to handling officialinformation. Its subject, then, is journalists, lobbyists, and spin doctors. Does the inter-action of these actors produce a new political-communicative space?
The work draws on systematic media monitoring, documentary and archival research,observation in public and private fora, and interviews with some 90 journalists, broad-casters, lobbyists and public relations professionals, the civil service, and politicians.
A Note on Civil Society and the Constitution
“Civic engagement” was an organizing idea for the Seattle meeting. It rests on a priornotion of a civic—or, its close analogue, civil—society. This is a notoriously slipperyconceptual figure, with its origins in early modern political philosophy and the ScottishEnlightenment and its reworking through Hegel, Gramsci, Habermas, and others. In con-temporary argument, it suggests the involvement of citizens in the political process. Inthis broad sense, the role of “civil society” has been much invoked in recent Scottishpolitical thinking, underpinning the Scottish Constitutional Convention, whose prepara-tory work laid the ground for the particular form devolution has taken north of theborder. In its present usage, the idea has stood for the nation organized as a public interestin pursuit of democratic change. Historically, it has referred to the dense network ofvoluntary affiliations in Scotland and the separate law, church, and educational systemthat were left untouched by the union. The Scottish Constitutional Convention was avehicle for resisting the centralism of Conservative administrations based in London,which gathered up a range of social and political forces—“civil society”—to devise thenew settlement brought in by the Labour government in 1997. What is relevant to ourdiscussion is that there has been a certain kind of professional middle-class engagementin creating the new political conditions. Once it was agreed to create a devolved politicalsystem, the constitutional movement was incorporated into the process of writing a broadframework of rules for the Parliament. The vehicle for this was the cross-party and laygroup called the Consultative Steering Group, which—counter to the British tradition—in effect wrote a parliamentary constitution based on radical democratic principles. Withthe general election of May 1999, the balance between civil society and political societyshifted decisively, as we moved into the era of representative party politics in Scotland.
A Note on Scotland’s Media Landscape
It is important to stress the distinctiveness of the daily and Sunday press in Scotland.This difference from the rest of the UK is also in some respects a feature of broadcast-ing. Distinctive media have developed in line with civil society. There are long-estab-lished broadsheet papers (The Scotsman and The Herald) and a very widely read tabloidpress (including most notably the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail). When you talkof the “national” press in Scotland, this does not equate to the London press, whichcirculates relatively weakly north of the border, although Scotland is really a stronglyregionalist country in terms of identities and press markets. Broadcasting ownership ishighly concentrated in the main commercial sector (ITV) on the Scottish Media Group,which reaches 90% of TV homes. In commercial radio, most local stations are ownedby Scottish Radio Holdings. In the public sector, radio and television are represented byBBC Scotland, which in radio is the only Scottish national station and in TV opts out of
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London for specific programs. The main debates about postdevolution media have con-cerned whether there should be some Scottish-originated BBC news as opposed to tak-ing all of the network programs from London. There has been some discussion aboutthe performance of the press in reporting the new politics and some questions raisedabout regionalism and the concentration of ownership in ITV. It is important to notethat Scots do receive UK networked programs and, to a relatively limited extent, doread newspapers fully originating south of the border or offering editions created spe-cifically for Scotland. There is a shared British political and communicative space withthe rest of the UK as well as a relatively enclosed Scottish one.
The Scottish Public Sphere
Our research has attempted to delineate the nature of the emergent Scottish public sphere.It has done so with a particular model in mind. The interest lies in the nexus of inter-relations between political journalism and government, lobbying and government, andlobbying and journalism. The underlying premise is that these forms of action are cru-cial to understanding communicative power in the political domain. They are at theheart of contemporary, promotional, political culture. In the next three sections, I sum-marize some of our findings.
Lobbying in Postdevolution Scotland
This has become a very visible feature of the political landscape since the elections ofMay 1999. Commercial lobbying has grown, in fact, since the 1997 devolution referen-dum in response to the perception that there is a new political marketplace. Lobbyistshave been at the heart of two of the most widely reported postdevolution political con-troversies, the “Lobbygate” affair (concerning allegations of improper access to minis-ters) and the Section 28 (or Clause 2a) repeal campaign over the “promotion” of homo-sexuality. Lobbyists in Scotland have been obsessed with escaping the taint of “sleaze”that has so disfigured this activity at Westminster. Alongside the commercial sector,voluntary organizations have also entered the frame. Perhaps we can call this the entryof organized civil society. There have been tensions between the commercial lobbyistsand the voluntary sector and considerable rivalries within the commercial sector itself.For instance, it has been the Westminster orientation of bodies such as the Associationfor Professional Political Consultants and the Public Relations Consultants’ Associationthat led to the formation of a home-grown body, the Association of Scottish PublicAffairs (ASPA). Aside from seeking credibility at the expense of its London-basedrivals, ASPA has tried to colonize the voluntary sector and to establish its overall hege-mony in Scotland, but it has not succeeded in this. One of the divisive points betweenthe various professional associations has been the extent to which lobbyists should beregulated by statute or be self-regulated. Much of the tension in this field between rivalgroups has concerned codes of practice. This issue was given considerable focus by“Lobbygate,” which led to an investigation by the Scottish Parliament’s StandardsCommittee, a watershed in the debate in Scotland.
Political and Parliamentary Journalism in Postdevolution Scotland
One issue of continuing controversy has been whether BBC Scotland should broadcastits own news hour in the 6:00–7:00 p.m. slot on BBC1. Our access to sources at the
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BBC has allowed us to shed new light on the background decision making over thisissue in the corporation, in particular the resistance in London to what is seen as “broad-casting nationalism” north of the border. We have also investigated the campaign tosecure distinctive terms for parliamentary broadcasting in Scotland, terms far moreliberal than at Westminster. This has been one instance of highly successful lobbyingtargeted at the Scottish Office prior to devolution. Another has been the campaign bythe Scottish Parliamentary Press Association (later restyled the Scottish ParliamentaryJournalists’ Association) to secure a right to roam the corridors of the Parliament andspace for political reporting there. Our access to the deliberations of the Expert Panel onMedia Issues (charged with drawing up the rules of the media game for the Parliament)allowed us to document the maneuvers of press and broadcasting and the campaign formedia accreditation in ways designed to prevent lobbyists from passing themselves offas journalists. Our research has also underlined the extent to which thinking about therules of the game was focused on the Parliament and not at all on the Executive, prob-ably with consequences for media coverage of the new Scottish administration. We havetracked the rapid institutionalization of the new rules for broadcasting and the manage-ment of political reporting through the Parliament’s press office. Scotland has rapidlybred a specialist corps of about 30–40 political correspondents who now tread the Edin-burgh beat and whose presence means that government and politics in Scotland areprominently (and often trenchantly) covered.
Government Information and Scottish Devolution
The new Scottish Executive’s Information Directorate (SEID) has been in the eye of themedia storm ever since devolution. It has had to make a difficult transition from itspredecessor—the Scottish Office Information Directorate (SOID)—not least because ofthe growth of ministerial portfolios from 7 to 22 and the well-publicized distaste of thefirst minister (head of the administration) for “spin doctoring.” SOID had begun tofollow London’s approach of trailing, rebuttal, and coordination in news managementonce New Labour was installed in May 1997. However, as devolution itself approached,there was no cultural change inside the organization, nor was any consideration given tohow the new Scottish polity would be served differently. We have examined in detailhow SOID handled the voter education campaign before the first Scottish parliamentaryelections. There were some undoubted shortcomings in how voters were informed aboutthe use of second-preference votes (a new departure in UK practice) which did notaugur well. Reviews of SOID/SEID were centered on internal efficiency issues ratherthan promoting a new culture of openness in line with stated aspirations for the Parlia-ment. As the Labour-Liberal coalition Executive got under way, its news managementfailings led to pressure from London to make more use of spin doctors in the guise ofspecial advisers. London-style measures did not help as a series of public relations di-sasters led to resignations among the special advisers. The reshaping of the devolvedgovernment information apparatus owes more to Whitehall under New Labour than itdoes to anything identifiably “Scottish.”
Reinvention or More of the Same?
Aspirations for constitutional change in Scotland have had a strong motivational force.But they have doubtless been out of kilter with what might be called reasonable expec-tations for change. In their varying ways, the players involved have made an adjustment
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to the new devolved realities, as described briefly here. Scottish political journalism hasa new focus in the fledgling Parliament and the Executive. By having a named spokes-person, the Executive has slightly modified the London style of press briefings, andindeed has now been followed in this by Downing Street. But that is hardly far-reachingchange. Edinburgh has followed the Blairite road of spin doctoring, but has done thisrather ineffectively. There is little evidence of a cultural change in how Scottish govern-ment is to proceed. This seems to stem from, first, not having thought greatly about itand, second, from Edinburgh’s subordinate status to the UK government. With the sameparty dominating in the two capitals, a continuous alignment of policy and style is goingon, and as the UK has now entered the next general election cycle, these considerationshave also begun to dominate in Scotland.
There is little sign of fundamental change in commercial lobbying either. The mainpursuit is the avoidance of statutory control. The London doctrine on this matter is thatit should not happen, as this would give special status to lobbyists over other citizens.So far, this argument has gone by default in Scotland, but there is no reason why itshould continue to do so, as the Parliament can certainly take a different view. The juryis still out. And so far as the political media are concerned, a new pack has formed atEdinburgh. Broadcasters and press were very concerned to get their feet under the tableand have ensured their access to the legislature and executive. Broadcasters have man-aged to devise a less stilted style of parliamentary coverage than that at Westminster,where television was never welcomed. But political broadcasting seems to have beenmuch less influential than press coverage in creating what for the moment is a rathernegative image of Scotland’s new politics. In short, there has been some institutionaliza-tion of a new public sphere, but no brave new polity so far. And yet, we have seen laiddown the foundations of significant constitutional change, whose impact both withinand outside Scotland will doubtless take some years more to become clear. One indica-tive new development since devolution has been the rise to the top of the UK newsagenda—on occasion—of Scottish stories. This suggests that decentralization of the stateis introducing a new media dynamic. The periphery is of interest for the center becauseit is and can be different and poses problems that require a political solution.
Some Concluding Considerations
The Scottish case shows how constitutional change makes us rethink our notion ofthe public sphere. Conventionally, this has been identified with the boundaries of thenation-state. But what I have argued here is that in a stateless nation, at the substatelevel, something already distinctive is being further built upon. It has certainly not trans-formed political communication, which remains recognizably British, but it has pro-duced an interconnected set of new institutions, and some incipient new practices. Sowe do have to think about the UK as now having a range of partially overlapping publicspheres. We always did, but devolution has formalized the situation. Add to this thepressures from above of “Europeanization,” the long-standing domestication of theEuropean agenda into British political life, and the formation at the EU level of an elitecommunicative space. Modes of identification and questions of citizenship, loyalty, andaffiliation are all in flux in the UK. This process of redefinition has implications fordifferent intensities and levels of civic engagement and multilayered conceptions ofcivil society.
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