Twin Tracks: Cultural and Political Nationalism after 1967

Abstract

Though easily conflated, the cultural and political nationalism of modern Scotland are not the same. This chapter surveys parallel developments in cultural production and constitutional change from 1967 to 2018, and the role of the Scottish intelligentsia in re-instituting national political space. Drawing on the key journals and magazines of the pro-devolution left, we explore the role of Scottish cultural ‘voice' in affirming, mobilising and institutionalising the national-political frame. Scottish devolution had an important but highly mediated cultural dimension, with claims to national representation deeply entangled in electoral triangulation, and the emergence of ‘neo-popular’ Scottish identity cementing the image of anti-Thatcherite cultural consensus. But the idea of Holyrood arriving on a wave of artistic renaissance and rising national ‘confidence’ is too simplistic, and obscures important disparities between the ‘twin tracks’ of cultural and political nationalism.