Scotland needs a new kind of festival to take on the liberal elite

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

In the arts world, composer and conductor Sir James McMillan could walk down any Scottish street without recognition, except possibly in his native Cumnock, despite being one of the most significant cultural figures to emerge from this country for decades. Also 65, there's time yet, but Sir James is not just a national but a global treasure, his deep Catholic faith inspiring modern choral works of astounding beauty on a par with the 19th Century Austrian giant Anton Bruckner, also a devout Catholic.
At 95 and widely regarded as the keeper of the Edinburgh Festival soul, Richard Demarco can lay justifiable claim for national beatification and the closest he came to controversy was his early support for Jimmy Boyle, the convicted killer who found redemption as a sculptor in Barlinnie prison's special unit. A long-running and now forgotten dispute with [[Edinburgh]] Council in the 90s about rent arrears for housing his archive in an empty Old Town school hardly counts these days.
I recall several conversations with him 20 years ago when at Scotland on Sunday, we campaigned to revive the moribund visual arts festival, hoping it would become a Scottish version of the Venice Biennale and attract the kind of A-list high rollers who don't grace the August season unless they have a kid performing on the Fringe; 21 years on, the [[Edinburgh]] Arts Festival is very much alive, but the oligarchs' super yachts off Granton Harbour are noticeable by their absence.
Always very much part of [[Edinburgh]]'s arts scene, but somehow detached from it, his vigour for an argument is undimmed, and in an interview in The Scotsman with Martin Roche, one of many executive committee members of the pro-EU campaign, the European Movement in Scotland, he called for [[Edinburgh]] to host a new annual 'Festival of Thought' because of the threat of the 'far right' in Europe, Donald Trump, and the rise of Reform in the UK.
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The idea is to assemble a cast of 'liberal thinkers' from across academic disciplines in defence of liberal democracy, but he does not want politicians involved and instead of the language of politics he favours 'the language of the arts' because it is 'the language of love for our fellow human beings'.
Whether it's laudable depends on your point of view, and his interviewer needed very little persuasion, but it struck me that the whole August shooting match, if that's an appropriate phrase, is already a celebration of liberal thought, particularly the Book Festival.
The exclusion of politicians at first glance sounds timely, especially in a year when having dumped fund manager Baillie Gifford because of its minimal investments in oil companies, the Book Festival will be giving pride of place to the most divisive politician of the last 20 years, Nicola Sturgeon. In what is supposed to be a celebration of free speech, it would be strange to ban politicians, but there should be a rule that if they are cashing in on their record by writing a retrospective reputation booster then they should get a damn good grilling, not the patsy chats the Book Festival likes to stage for its favourites.
I don't know if he was invited, but I can't imagine Boris Johnson getting an easy ride if he came up to promote his memoir, Unleashed, if he was being cross-examined by Kirsty Wark. How she approaches her conversation with Nicola Sturgeon remains to be seen, but there would be a roaring trade for tickets on Viagogo if the inquisitor was JK Rowling.
Richard Demarco (Image: Newsquest)
A Festival of Politics was tried a few years ago, with a series of crashingly dull discussions at Holyrood which received the audiences it deserved, but now politicians are everywhere on the Fringe, most notably as guests on Iain Dale's 'All Talk' show for LBC radio at the EICC, and indeed The Herald's Unspun Live at Summerhall – now home of the Demarco Archive – with John Swinney and Anas Sarwar lined up for conversations with Herald journalists. None of it should be as cringeworthy as the Alex Salmond Show at the Assembly Rooms, at which the late SNP leader told sexist gags which would get him banned from MasterChef.
Without a politician in sight, this year's Arts Festival itself is way ahead of the Demarco plan, with events like Decolonosing the Outdoors, another about 'the histories of masculine-leaning gender diversity in Scotland' and My Blood Runs Purple, a short experimental film 'questioning the inequalities and barriers in healthcare offered to artists in so-called black, gendered bodies', putting it well in the liberal vanguard. Its finale is a conversation event in which artists, 'thinkers' and local groups assemble to 'imagine a world where art bridges the knowledge of the past with a sustainable, interconnected future.'
At 95, Demarco can be forgiven if this has all passed him by, as it will have done for 95 per cent of the population, the kind of people who adore Lorraine Kelly. But this is the problem with the Scottish liberal elite – they spend so much time talking to each other that the rejection of their world view is so bewildering that the best they can come up with is to turn inwards in an ever-tightening circle.
Looks like the job's a good'un, Ricky, but it's enough to make me vote Reform.