An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Rory Scothorne (Postdoctoral Fellow 2023-24)
Print, Party, NGOization: Organising the Radical Intelligentsia in 1970s Scotland
The prevailing concepts and discourses through which Scottish society is analysed today were forged during a period of interconnected intellectual, cultural and political ferment which began in the 1960s and stabilised by the 1990s. This political-cultural movement, stimulated by the rise of Scottish nationalism and the growing possibility of national self-government, generated competing critical lenses for exploring the so-called “Scottish Question”, which connects the issue of national political representation to wider questions of culture, identity, history and political economy. The bulk of this intellectual work was led by writers who identified with, or were at least adjacent to, a “radical left” political tradition in Scotland, and helped to imbue Scottish political and cultural discourses with the language and priorities of the left. Until recently, scholarship on Scottish intellectual life emphasised the 1980s as the pivotal decade in these developments, during which the challenge of representing Scotland under an Anglo-centric Conservative Government fell to artists and writers in the absence of a Scottish Parliament. This paper seeks to turn attention to the 1970s, however, and excavate the foundations of this new, self-consciously national Scottish intelligentsia. It does so by analysing the ways in which Scotland’s radical intellectuals sought to organise themselves to respond to the expansion of Scotland’s political horizons during the rise of the Scottish National Party between 1967 and 1979. At first, through an expanding realm of magazines, books and pamphlets, the intelligentsia formed a community of print, generating a national identity for itself at a critical distance from politics. Then, seeking to intervene in politics on their own terms, radical intellectuals found themselves disappointed by the reality of the party system. Finally, this new intelligentsia found a more sustainable political role for itself in the emerging world of think-tanks and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), at once inside and outside of politics, able to influence things while evading the more practical difficulties of mass democracy.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83178441780
Passcode: Kj7gnpP4
Please note that our weekly seminars will take place in the Moot Court in the School of Law between September and December 2023.
Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/old-college-north