David Bennett

Berwick Upon Tweed is the last town in England along the coast road before the border with Scotland.

It is three miles from the border, and as I wrote in an article about The Coast Road To Edinburgh, on its seaward side there are high earth ramparts that were built in the late 1500s, during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I to protect the town from an invasion by Scotland.

Warning Of Invasion

The fire baskets on the ramparts at Berwick are now empty. At one time though they stood ready to act as beacons in case of an invasion from Scotland – an invasion that never came.

Instead in 1707, after Scotland’s disastrous adventures in Panama, the country was forced by threat of bankruptcy into union with England.

Royal Houses

To understand more about the relationship of Scotland and England, we have to look at the royal houses of Scotland and England and at the rules of succession to the English throne.

The House of Stuart (a name whose origin means ‘governor’ and which is carried down in the word ‘steward’) was started by Robert II of Scotland at the end of the 1300s. It carried through to James VI of Scotland who became also James I of England.

Although this was a personal union of the thrones of Scotland and England in the hands of one man, the two countries remained separate.

The Rules Of Royal Succession

The English rules of succession stated that males succeed to the throne before females. So when King James VI (James II of England) had a son, it took away the line of succession from his adult sister Mary.

The ‘problem’ was that King James II had become a Catholic, and England had fought to become a Protestant country.

The Protestant faction in England knew there was no danger of James’ daughter Mary becoming a Catholic, but what about James’ new infant son?

Protestant England felt in danger from a Catholic monarch and it could see itself being again ruled indirectly by Catholic France and the Vatican.

So with the help of Protestant Holland, the Protestant faction in England overthrew King James in what was called The Glorious Revolution of 1688.

King James was exiled and lived out his days in France. He died there in 1701 aged 67 – in Saint-Germain-en-Laye – a small town just outside Paris.

Now the way was clear for James’ adult sister Mary to take the throne of England, which she did with William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange) He became William III of England and Mary became Mary II of England.

The Act Of Settlement

As a final seal on the Protestant succession, the Act of Settlement of 1701 established or ‘settled’ the succession of the English throne on the Protestant House of Hanover.

What the Act Of Settlement meant for Scotland was that when England and Scotland were united by the 1707 Act Of Union, Protestant succession applied to Scotland also.

That meant the end of the Stuart line of succession to the throne of England and for Scotland. In future, it would be a ‘foreign’ king (or queen) who ruled Scotland.

Royal Succession Today – William And Kate

On a detour to modern and topical events – if Prince William and Kate Middleton have a girl, then she as the first-born daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will take precedence in the right of succession over any younger brothers she might have.

That is because at a summit conference in Perth, Australia last year, the leaders of all the Commonwealth countries of which the Queen is the head of state approved a change to the rules of Royal succession.

Since that ruling, the sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne.

I imagine that Queen Elizabeth II must sometimes reflect on the old rules under which only when there were no sons, as in the case of her father George VI, did the crown pass to the eldest daughter.

Had she had brothers – even younger brothers – she would not have taken the throne.

Back To The History Of Scotland And England – The Jacobite Uprisings

The First Jacobite Rising (or the Jacobite Rebellion – depending on whose side you were on) of 1715 was an attempt by Scotland to put a Stuart king back on the throne of Scotland.

The word Jacobite is a reference to Jacob or James – and it means someone who supports the return of King James to the throne.

That uprising failed and the situation simmered until 1745 when the Jacobites rose again.

This time they did so under Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he was known.

Catholic France was supposed to support the Stuart cause, but the support did not materialise.

The second Jacobite Rebellion was crushed, there was not another ‘rising’ in Scotland until the 1990s when Scotland gained its own parliamant.

The Scottish Parliament

It is a parliament of a sort. It makes legislation but its ultimate authority is derived from the Parliament in London.

The London parliament governs the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, and so the Scottish Parliament derives its ultimate authority from the Westminster Parliament in London.

Some see this delegated authority – this partial devolution – as a step along the way to total independence of Scotland from England.

Since the emergence of a multiplicity of nationalist movements worldwide in the middle of the 20th century, the moral high ground has been with those who seek to declare themselves an independent nation.

Can Scotland ride that tide and declare itself free of Great Britain, free of England, against the wishes of the Westminster parliament?

Do the people of Scotland want it? Only a properly worded referendum and a proper presentation of the facts will find out.

Will Scotland make its fortune from the oil and whiskey industries? Will the Scots survive – and will they face the same relationship with England that brought about the union of 1707 – dealings that sting and smart and have not been forgotten three hundred years later?

Referendum In Scotland

The newspapers are full of reports, arguments and counter-arguments about the proposed referendum on full independence and devolution from Great Britain.

Personally, I think that David Cameron, the UK prime minister, does not want to be remembered as the man under whose watch England and Scotland split apart.

In a more majestic thread in the tapestry of history, I can well imagine that the Queen – Queen Elizabeth II – thinks the same.

The referendum on independence for Scotland is set for 2014.

I wonder whether relations with the Westminster government over the next three years will be benign or filled with tension and discord?

Will the questions that are asked in the referendum reflect what people want the referendum to ask?

The Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore MP, is a minister in the British government in Westminster.

He has not been shy in stating that any referendum must be on terms dictated by the UK parliament and not on whatever terms the Scottish Assembly thinks is suitable.

When I heard Mr Moore say this, I thought that if anything was likely to irritate the Scots at this tricky time it is being told what to do by a minister in faraway London.

So when I saw this headline quoting Alex Salmond – the First Minister of the Scottish government – that Scotland will be a beacon to England, my first thought was of the beacons at Berwick built to warn of a Scottish invasion.

I wonder how much of a double entendre he had in mind?

Alex Salmond wrote in the Guardian about the future relations between Scotland and England, and you can read the full article here. In relation to Scotland being a beacon for England, he wrote:

An independent Scotland can be a beacon for progressive opinion south of the border and further afield, addressing policy challenges in ways that reflect the universal values of fairness and are capable of being considered, adapted and implemented according to the circumstances and wishes within the other jurisdictions of these islands and beyond.

Why Scotland Will Be A Beacon For England

One of the beauties of writing an article is that I get to voice my opinion.

I don’t have to carry out a large survey and extract ‘statistically significant results’. I can go with my gut feeling and the impressions I gain as I talk to people.

And one of the things that I feel in my gut is that a greater weight given to the Scottish view of life would do the whole of Britain good.

Back To Photography

One of the aspects of photography that I like very much is the way that the same scene can be rendered in different ways – softly and gently, or full of drama.

Here is the same bridge – the same photograph in fact as the one at the beginning of this article – treated differently.

The New Scottish Parliament

Wouldn’t you think that there has been a parliament continuously since Scotland became a country many centuries ago?

It’s a natural question to ask – and indeed the first recorded reference to a meeting of the Scottish parliament dates from 1235 and the first permanent meeting place for the parliament was established in 1632.

However, in the late 1600s Scotland made a huge blunder when it chose Panama as the setting for its colonial expansion. Scotland was already in trouble financially, and establishing a colony abroad seemed like a good idea.

After all, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and of course England had tried and succeeded at it.

And Scotland didn’t want to be left further behind in the heady days at the end of the 17th century when the European world was snapping up colonies all around the globe.

Unfortunately, the Panama isthmus was a terrible choice for Scotland’s venture. It was cut off from the rest of Latin America by the Darien Gap (still a treacherous swampy area today) and trade was a failure while disease was widespread. The Spanish who were busy claiming Latin American for themselves weren’t too friendly either.

The Scots had originally secured investment for the colony from international backers but when England leaned on the backers to withdraw, the Scots turned to their own people to raise the capital.

When the venture failed, the investment was lost and Scotland was more or less bankrupt.

At which point England kindly offered to pay off Scotland’s debts in return for political union.

When I first learned of this jewel of history, I thought of the analogy of a forced marriage with the aged groom paying off the beautiful bride’s debts in return for her hand in marriage.

The Act Of Union

Whatever the truth of the way the union came about, by 1707 England and Scotland became the United Kingdom and that was the end of the Scottish Parliament for the best part of 300 years.

The situation changed with a referendum in 1979 that set the scene for the UK Parliament to devolve power to a Scottish Assembly.

The first elections to the Scottish parliament were held in 1999 and in September of that year the first Bill was presented to it.

Constitutional Arguments

Because the Scottish Assembly was created under devolved powers that issued from the Parliament in Westminster, it does not have power over areas such as foreign policy and defence.

And there are constitutional arguments about whether the United Kingdom parliament could withdraw the legislation that has given Scotland its Assembly.

The argument runs that because the Scottish parliament was created by devolved legislation its power could be taken away under the principle that that which has been devolved may be reclaimed.

Frankly, I cannot see many Scots standing for that argument, and it seems to me that the likely direction is for further devolution.

Time will tell…

The Cost Of Building The Parliament

In 2003, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC was appointed to find out what went wrong with the project to construct the new building designed to house the Scottish Parliament.

He was appointed to find out how the cost rose from the 1997 estimate of somewhere between £24 million and £44 million to its eventual cost of £430 million in 2004.

The Site

Several locations were originally suggested for the new building, but eventually the Parliament was constructed on a piece of land at the bottom end of the long street at the other end of which is Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile.

The Palace of Holyrood, where the Queen lives when she is in Scotland, is also at the bottom of this street.

And the new Parliament building is directly across the street from the palace.

I can just imagine someone in Holyrood peering from behind the net curtains, and looking across at the Parliament as it was being built and lamenting the blot on the landscape. Or perhaps not.

Actually, there is something very fitting about the home of the constitutional monarch being located directly opposite the elected parliament. It’s a kind of checks and balances building arrangement with the monarch and the elected representatives facing one another.

Arthur’s Seat

However they are arranged, the Palace of Holyrood and the Parliament building are both dwarfed by Arthur’s Seat – the main crag of a small range of hills that together form the bulk of Holyrood Park.

Arthur’s Seat is 800 feet (250m) tall and is the remains of a volcano, now long extinct and covered in grass.

It is usually dotted with the tiny figures of people walking to the top – as we did a year and a half ago now.

And it is just a short distance from Holyrood House and the Parliament.

The Conclusion Of the Enquiry Into The Cost Of The Building Works

Lord Fraser concluded that the original estimate for the cost of building the Parliament was unrealistic given the very complex design envisaged by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles.

Miralles did not live to see the building work completed as, sadly, he died of a brain tumour in the year 2000, aged only 45.

Opinions On Architecture

To take a slight detour on the subject of architecture, this summer we went to several events at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

One event that we went to was entitled Architecture In The Ruins given by two critics of architecture – Miles Glendinning and Owen Hatherley.

In its own words, the event:

sets out to excavate the architectural wreckage created by an age of greed. It provides a coruscating attack on an era of iconic buildings and ‘signature’ architecture.

Owen Hatherley has travelled up and down Britain looking for bad architecture.

I was heartened when he had a few choice words to say about the soulless buildings that have sprung up in the center of Leeds (where Tamara and I are living now).

He illustrated his talk with slides and I remember how he ridiculed the kind of building that is covered in fake balconies only inches deep that are supposed to add special status value to poorly designed blocks of flats.

He railed against Councils that sold development sites to developers for pennies. The developers then built monstrosities with fake appeal and small rooms that sold at inflated prices.

Signature Architecture

The attack on ‘signature architecture’ struck a chord with me.

Signature architecture means the kind of building that shows off how talented and individual the architect is, but which produces a building that bears no relationship to the environment in which it is situated.

And that is a fair criticism to level at the Parliament building.

Things I Like

There are a lot of things that I like about the building. For instance, the colors are very attractive. The metal and concrete are light in color but the metal has been brushed so that it isn’t blindingly shiny.

The building is low and made up of lots of interacting elements, so it doesn’t just sit there like a lump that repels all comers.

Instead, its low and scattered profile seems fitting for a parliament that is supposed to represent the people rather than lord it over them.

And there is lots of repetition of detail that ties the whole building together.

You can see the repeat pattern near the windows in the photographs below. The pattern is supposed to echo the lecterns at which representatives speak. And I can see that acting as a reminder to MPs that their job is to take part – to speak and argue and agree.

Sketches Of Spain And Mexico

But the fact is that parts of the front are covered with wooden sticks about two inches thick that have nothing to do with Scottish architectural styles.

They reminded me instantly of a Mexican hut. In my mind’s eye I ‘saw’ a connection with the Catalan heritage of the architect. From there I quickly imagined Miralles on vacation as a teenager in the south of Spain or in Mexico, admiring the rough peasant huts with branches and twigs covering the verandahs out front.

Still, I don’t object to the idea of there being a connection with peasant huts because the parliament building is a building for representatives of the people to meet and discuss matters. Better that than something grand and superior.

If you detect my ambivalence, you are right. I like the building and at the same time I think the wooden sticks are faintly ridiculous. But I like the ridiculousness of it. It raises a smile and perks me up.

I could happily go to look at the building again. It is pleasant. Perhaps that is the bottom line.

In The Debating Chamber

The inside of the building gets my vote. The first thing I noticed is that the seats in the debating chamber are not arranged in two sets of opposing rows like in the House Of Commons in London. Instead the seats are arranged in a collective circle around the speaker.

Of course, the politics may be just as divisive and wasteful as Westminster politics, but the debating chamber, at least, does not encourage it.

Conclusion

So that is my take on the Parliament building. It attracts many visitors and there are free tours of the smaller committee rooms.

Tamara encouraged me to be as enthusiastic as she was to take the tour and I am glad we did. She was right – it’s a great way to see parts of the building that casual visitors are unlikely to see otherwise.

This is the rail bridge over the river Forth. On the southern shore, on the far side across the water in this photograph, is Edinburgh.

Note: You can find the ecard of this image in the Urban Landscapes category of Quillcards. Just head over there and then navigate to the images on page two of that category.

To the east (to the left of this photo) is the North Sea – just a few miles away.

There is a saying in Britain that something ‘is like painting the Forth Bridge’, which means that a task is a never ending.

The saying comes from the fact there is so much steel in the Forth Rail Bridge that the task of painting it is continuous and never ending.

The painters start at one end and by the time they get to the other end, the end where they started needs to be painted again.

There is even a 1930s British Pathe Film news item showing painters painting the bridge, with a voice-over describing how the work must go on (and on, and on).

A Modern Solution To An Old Saying

Time moves on, and now painters are halfway through painting the Forth Rail Bridge with a glass flake epoxy coating that will last for decades and put an end to the continuous painting efforts.

It is not just a matter of repainting. There were concerns that the thick glass flake epoxy wouldn’t stick unless the steel was sandblasted clean, and with over 50,000 tons of steel, six and one half million rivets, and a surface of two and one half million square feet (230,000m²) to cover, sandblasting would have taken rather a long time.

There were also concerns that the paint wouldn’t flex enough in the hostile weather conditions of the River Forth. The bridge twists and turns in the wind, and heats up and cools down during the day and night.

Leighs Paints who produce the new paint, set up a flex-bed to investigate whether the glass flake epoxy would stick and the result was that the paint held despite the flexing. Sandblasting was also found to be unnecessary and so the task of painting the bridge could get under way.

Six years later the painters are halfway through the task.

So it looks like it’s the death knell for ‘It’s like painting the Forth Bridge’.

Why There Is So Much Steel In The Forth Rail Bridge

The bridge was built not only to be strong but also to look strong.

That is because in 1879 – not many years before the Forth Rail Bridge was built – the bridge over the Firth of Tay near Dundee collapsed during a gale taking a train and its 75 passengers and crew to the river below.

The passengers and crew all died. However, the North British Railway Company (who owned the train and the Tay Bridge) eventually recovered the train from the depths and put it back to work.

I have this image in my mind of a barnacle-and-seaweed-encrusted engine blowing ghostly smoke from its stack and it makes its way in the dead of night over the new bridge over the river Tay.

A Public Outcry

The effect of the Tay Bridge disaster was that there was an outcry, and the public demanded that any new bridges be safe beyond question: Hence the amount of steel in the Forth Bridge.

Now looking up at the Forth Bridge from the northern shore, everything is quiet until a train comes through. Then the steel screeches and groans until the train suddenly appears high above, heading north.

Down below there is a small collection of houses and a public house, and this is a view of the bridge through the pub window.

It seems such a strong statement on the landscape, don’t you think, to have this view outside the window.

Up Close

Walking up a small road that overlooks the shore, the stanchions of the bridge are hidden and the girders seem like something from The War of The Worlds.

The Forth Road Bridge

In comparison, the road bridge a thousand yards upstream is a distant sliver of concrete that shoots across the Firth.

It’s far enough from the rail bridge that there is no traffic hum. It’s so strange. Just across the water is Edinburgh, but here it feels like a loop out of time, peaceful and slowed down.

The Firth Of Forth

A firth is the Scottish word for an estuary. It derives from the Norse word fjord, and geologically speaking the Firth Of Forth is a fjord.

It is tidal as far as Stirling, 30 miles, (50km) to the west, which accounts for the importance of the bridges across the Forth that save the westward deviation on the road north to Perth and beyond that to the Highlands.

The Firth Of Forth is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the islands in the firth are home to many tens of thousands of seabirds.

Bass Rock in the Firth is world famous for its colonies of gannets, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, eider duck, peregrine falcons, and grey seals, with bottlenose dolphins sighted off the island.

It is for this reason that the Grangemouth oil refinery about 20 miles west of Edinburgh is so closely monitored. The refinery is operated by INEOS Group Limited and the last oil spill was in 2008.

Like with most of the world today, there is a ticking time bomb of technology behind the pleasant views across the Firth Of Forth.