Has the William Wallace story any relevance in the current referendum debate?  Lanark had   its annual Wallace Day March  recently (double the turn-out from last year) with excellent speeches  from two of the younger and more  dynamic future -focussed thinkers in the SNP, Dr Aileen McLeod MSP and Alwyn Smith the very articulate Europhile MEP.  Speeches  made around the name of Wallace  have to be carefully crafted (‘nuanced in poli-speak) as  there are many who call for his name to be kept out of  focus within the YES campaign. ‘Freedom’, ‘Liberty’, ‘the English-enemy ’, ‘national liberation’ are all part of the Wallace discourse, rhetoric/mythologies; yet all have been banned within the douce, ever so respectable , YES campaign’s   communication  strategy.

Yet any society that deserves the title ‘Nation’ has earned that right, often through the diligence, courage, sacrifice and patriotism of national heroes. Indeed many new post-colonial states have created national honours called National Hero  celebrated  annually. The collective global history of  the politics of Nationalism has provided a  pantheon of heroic figures, Ghandi, Mandela, Kenyatta, Washington, Ho Chi Minh, Marti, Bolivar while in Wallace and Bruce  Scotland has its own Independence heroes to join that illustrious list.

There is no need here to reiterate the Wallace details but his status as Hero of Scotland is firmly and reliably situated in historic truth as well as in our deeply felt national mythological/ cultural and folk heritage. By 1297 William Wallace was in the words of the Book of Pluscarden able to emerge as a ‘true champion of the kingdom for the independence of its people’; a struggle that   climaxed with the victorious Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and subsequently the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.

Wallace by his many acts of defiance and assertiveness created the necessary heroic aura within the folklore of Scotland that enabled the very creation of a medieval single nation of Scotland from what was a dislocated   assembly of disparate tribal fiefdoms.  It was the idea of Wallace created by his acts of courage (and indeed the barbarity of his punishment) that made possible the several heroic myths and legends which any society needs in order to engender the ‘imagined nation’ which we call Scotland.  Yet as Alwyn Smith told us  in delivering his memorial address: 

‘…a nation must know its history, and that’s true, Independence for me isn’t about history, it never has been.  It’s not about flags, songs, language, culture, ancient battles seen through the blood soaked mists of time.  Independence for me has always been about what we don’t have: Power.The Power to put people back in charge of their own lives, to protect the vulnerable, because we can all be weak, we can all stumble and what is the Common Weal if it isn’t US working together with our neighbours.  The Power to grow our economy, because too many of our people are too poor and too many of our communities are blighted by the symptoms of poverty, all the more shaming in one of the world’s richest countries.  The part of Glasgow I’m from has a lower male life expectancy than the Gaza Strip!  I'm angry, but I've learned to channel that anger into winning our country back and fixing it’  

Words that speak to the spirit of Wallace as a fighter for a just  cause, recognized by Robert Burns.

 Burns in several of his letters indicated that the first book and THE book which shaped his national consciousness was The Life of Wallace with its narrative of patriotism, valour and independence.

‘The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veinsa ,’ said Burns, ‘which will boil along there till the flood gates of life shut in eternal rest.’

Without the creation of a narrative of romantic heroic patriotism there can be little sense of ‘nation’.  Neil Davidson in his ‘The Origins of Scottish Nationhood’ makes this implicit: ‘First, although there is a perfectly rational case to be made for Scottish nationalism as a political movement, no nationalist cause has ever sustained support without mobilising the myths of which, to a large extent, every national identity consists.’

Historians have at best an ambivalent attitude towards the binary distinction in the Greek logos (words of truth) and mythos (words of  authorative belief) . Yet increasingly we read of the study of  the confluence of myth and history particularly within early  mediaeval  studies and in our case Celtic  and  early Scottish  historiography. The tension twixt mythologies and ‘scientific historical studies’ has become an area of some serious study and the Wallace story and its political implications needs to be part of that.

Yet, Wallace was a proto-type of the independence warrior and by his indefatigable acts of bravery including the ultimate blood sacrifice of his own life, he has inspired generations of ‘ Scottish patriots’ to further the political cause of Independence. He inspired others too including the  Italian nationalist Garibaldi in the 1850s as well as significant  anti- colonial leaders who systematically dismantled the old European empires of Spain , Portugal, Holland, France and of course our own British empire.

In 1947 at the founding of the UN there were 49 state members. By 2011 the UN had close to 200 sovereign states all of whom had found their own way into the light of independence.

 Without Wallace Scotland as a nation could have been consumed or at best adopted by its larger neighbour.  (Though Scotland was never quite a colony of London it did suffer what is called coloniality- a term originating from the post-colonial Latin American experience.  Within  coloniality certain elements of the neo-colonial experience are retained/exercised through forms of cultural retentions (language, ways of thinking, cultural influences)  creating a near hegemony of cultural power/authority from the  dominant influence over the subordinate. In Scottish education in the 60s and 70s in the old High Schools, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Addison, Lamb,  Dickens, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth dominated the ‘English’ syllabus.  In Canada much of contemporary cultural and arts policy is ‘Canada first’; an attempt to resist the awesome cultural power and influence of its larger and dominant neighbour to the south; a cultural influence described as ‘coloniality’. )

Though the expression of national sovereignty was suppressed in Scotland after 1707, paradoxically many 18^th century Scottish enlightenment scholars and writers espoused the concept of liberty, freedom and sovereignty- part of the Wallace narrative. Again the apparent contradiction of Scottish produced intellectual anti-colonial enlightenment thought,  seized upon  and utleized in the American struggles for independence by Washington and Bolivar  yet hotly repulsed by Scots elites at Westminster.

What Wallace would have recognised however would be the resultant resistance by native populations against the many tyrannies of colonial domination. Popular movements of anti-colonial resistance to the imposition of Westminster rule across the globe, helped create the Commonwealth that we will celebrate in Glasgow next year with the Commonwealth Games. It is however an embarrassing  reality that while we invite over 50 nation-states who have gained independence from Westminster to our shores we have yet to find our own way; to forge our own destiny.   In her address in Lanark, Aileen Mcleod put it this way:

In 389 days we will all have an opportunity to do just that – to take control of our own destiny and to build a Scotland that reflects our values, our aspirations and our principles. That is what independence is about – the ability to take  control of our own destiny. I believe that the decisions that affect the people of Scotland should be taken in a parliament elected by the people of Scotland. That is the real point about independence. And that is the prize that is on offer in just over a year from now. It is of course the same prize that William Wallace fought for more than 7 centuries ago.

Then there was a passage that reflected Wallace-values.

‘ For me independence is not purely about the sovereignty of the people as a fundamental right, though it certainly is about that, it is also – increasingly – the only means by which we can properly build a society in Scotland that is prosperous, compassionate and inclusive: a society that cares for its vulnerable and disadvantaged. A society free from the wicked and spiteful measures – like the bedroom tax and other so-called welfare “reforms” – that London’s Tory government has imposed on those in our communities least able to fend for themselves.

 We have also seen over the last 20 years new democracies arise from the ashes of the old Soviet Union with 15 newly independent states formed.  Many have subsequently joined with the rest of sovereign Europe in the European Union. This joining together for greater economic strength and the mutual sharing of interests would (again) have been recognised by Wallace. He was born in Franc  as were many of the Scottish nobility of the period while so much of our national history is linked through various marriages, old trade-agreements and mutual defence treaties with our friends in Europe.  Alwyn Smith let us know;

 There’s some debate on the extent of his travels of course, and it is often difficult to separate myth from fact, but what is clear is that he was travelled, multilingual, multicultural and was no stranger to international affairs.

He had a letter of safe passage from Philip the Fair of France when he was captured. The letter was to Pope Boniface in Rome asking him to aid Wallace and the Scots and the supposition is that Wallace would have sought to travel to Rome to see Balliol, then a guest of the Vatican, who he regarded as the rightful King of Scots.  He may have spent as much as six years overseas between known actions in Scotland.

He was captured on August the 5th, 1305 at Robroyston and was carrying the letter from Philip of France as well as a safe conduct letter from Haakon V of Norway.

The first thing he and the Scots did after the first victory at Stirling was to send the Lubeck letter to the Hanseatic League to tell them that Scotland was open for business again.  The first thing that Scotland did on independence was to open up to international trade after it had been closed down by union with England.

.

 But what Wallace would recognize as blatantly obvious is the absolute right, indeed political and economic imperative of Scotland gaining the right to make decisions in Scotland for the betterment of its own people. Who can govern Scotland better-the current Westminster Cameron Osborne Clegg (COC-up) or   a parliament in Edinburgh? Wallace would see that it makes logical absolute sense to end the deceit of a democracy denied to the Scottish people by the imposition of a Tory led majority in Westminster, yet with only a single Tory MP from Scotland. Wallace saw leadership as improving the lives of others, selflessly contributing without seeking personal gain while making significant personal sacrifices. We can learn much from much from Wallace as we go forward with the YES campaign.