Home > Alex Massie

Saturday 21 November 2009

The SNP, Cricket and Soft Unionism

Tuesday, 14th July 2009

There were at least a dozen people on my flight from Edinburgh to Cardiff last week who were clearly heading to Wales to watch the test match. This was not a surprise, given that tests held at Headingley and, perhaps especially, Old Trafford attract plenty of spectators from north of the border. There is much more enthusiasm for cricket, and much more cricket actuallly played, in Scotland than many people in England appreciate.

And there's much more cricket in Scotland than some Scots appreciate too. This is especially true of joyless, chippy, narrow-minded, prejudiced nationalist members of the Scottish parliament, plenty of whom see the game as an unwecome, if irrelevent, interloper at best and, doubtless, an agent of English colonialism at worst. This, naturally, is Class-A piffle.

So, it's not a surprise that Sandra White, an SNP MSP from Glasgow, has put down a ridiculous parliamentary motion decrying the amount of attention paid to the Ashes series as "over-the-top" and demanding that cricket be purged from Scottish television screens. Naturally, some of her colleagues support her.

As Scottish Unionist observes, four years ago, Christine Grahame, another SNP MSP, tabled a motion S2M-3274, lamenting the “overwhelming UK-wide coverage of a sport that is of only marginal interest in Scotland”. Indeed, this interest is so marginal that viewing rates in Scotland are as good, and sometimes better, than they are in England. Going further back, the Forfarshire vs Perthshire derby match used to attract crowds of up to 10,000 people, while Aberdeenshire's fixtures at Mannofield could boast similar attendances.

Ms Grahame has tried, unsuccessfully, to be elected as a constituency MSP here in the Borders and might, perhaps, reflect that the cricket clubs in the Border League predate any rugby or football club in the country. Selkirk, for instance, was founded in 1851 and is not even the oldest in the league. It would be nice to think that the cricketing vote has helped ensure that Ms Grahame's campaigning efforts have been unsuccessful.

Quite how disparaging cricket helps the SNP in their efforts to attract support from the asian communities of Glasgow and Edinburgh is also something of a mystery. (Equally, one might note that since live coverage is on SKY, these people are really objecting to coverage on the news... Barmy.)

Nor is there any contradiction between supporting Scogtland at rugby and England at cricket. Or, if there is, then it's one that plenty of Scots are quite happy to go along with. (For that matter, one can perfectly easily support the Scottish national side in its competitions and also want England to win as well. And in fact there are plenty of SNP supporters who fall into this category.)

In that sense, the SNP's dislike of cricket - based on ignorance and prejudice though it may be - has a point: cricket is part of what one might term a kind of cultural Unionism. It's a Unionism that would largey survive even if Scotland were to become an independent country (after all, the Irish retain an interest in cricket) but Soft Unionism is still Unionism. And for the hardliners in the SNP that makes it an enemy, alien force occupying Scotland. Loopy, but also, alas, predictable. They would, presumably, take the same attitude to, say, Shakespeare and other aspects of Soft Unionism.

UPDATE: Left Back in the Changing Room has more, including the fun (if true!) that more people in Scotland watch cricket (or did in 2005) than vote for the SNP.

UPDATE2: My old friend Tom Peterkin piles on, with some nice tales of JM Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle playing in Kirriemuir.

Filed under: Cricket (97 more articles) , England (36 more articles) , Scotland (195 more articles) , SNP (51 more articles)

Previous Back to Alex Massie Next

Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (10)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

BM

July 14th, 2009 10:41am Report this comment

Christine Graham is to the SNP what George Foulkes is to the Labour Party. I wouldn't pay much attention to either of them, nor the OTT and double-standard rhetoric of SU, for that matter.

Jim silvey

July 14th, 2009 10:42am Report this comment

The usual tosh from a former journalistic has been. Cricket is easily the most irrelevant, boring and utterly pointless game ever thought up. The fact that it is revered in the Borders only highlights the disproportionately high levels of English imperialist influence that part of our country has been subjected to, along with their pre-occupation for chasing foxes around the countryside in red tunics. Another sport, still re-enacted to this day in Jedburgh (and indeed other parts of Scotland) is the Ba. What is now a leather football, was, in times now since passed, an English soldiers head which the inhabitants gladly kicked around the streets for a few hours. Alas such traditions were stamped out once imperialist subjugation was formalised with the Act of Union in 1707. I am sure however were it to be revived in its original format that the viewing figures, were it to be aired (and why not?) would far outnumber that watching that dull, god-forsaken game referred to as cricket.

Gareloch

July 14th, 2009 10:57am Report this comment

I have heard that Clydeside firebrand Jimmy Reid has a soft spot for cricket and has been heard enthusing about the English XI. Urban myth? Can anybody enlighten us?

Lennie

July 14th, 2009 11:18am Report this comment

Thanks for bringing this up. It saddens me just as the SNP were starting to convince me that they were more than just a bunch of racist Little Scotlanders, they go and do this.

If I can be a little absurd for a moment - there are probably more cricketers in Scotland than Gaelic speakers, but do you see us complaining about the amount of time and money spent supporting the language?

I would support political independence for Scotland but for the SNPs constant sniping against the cultural Union.

Alex Massie

July 14th, 2009 11:37am Report this comment

Gareloch - I believe you are correct and that, yes, Jimmy Reid is a passionate cricket fan. Politics is one thing, cricket quite another...

ScottishUnionist.com

July 14th, 2009 12:47pm Report this comment

It was pointed out to Christine Grahame in 2005 that 540,000 Scots had watched the climax of the final Ashes test but only 412,000 had voted SNP at the previous election.

It was a super rebuff to her claim that cricket is “only marginal interest in Scotland”.

Unfortunately the SNP went on to do rather better in 2007, although Sandra White now seems determined to undermine those gains!

dearieme

July 14th, 2009 12:58pm Report this comment

The best captain England ever had was a Scot. But then "England" was always the British side, supplemented by sons of Empire such as Ranji. The SNP should be ashamed of themselves.

LawrenceLives

July 14th, 2009 2:35pm Report this comment

The idea that two back benchers make a Party is absurd.

I remember sitting watching cricket in an Edinburgh bar sometime ago - slightly amused - with the Private Secretary of the then leader of the SNP, John Swinney, and the SNP's head of research. Both of whom were big cricket fans and both cheering on England.

I'm going to Lords on Thursday ... and yes, I'm a member of the SNP.

tommyt

July 14th, 2009 2:49pm Report this comment

I dont really know what to say about this, the SNP heartlands, insofar as they exist are in Aberdeenshire, FOrfarshire and Perthshire, which is, pretty much, where the majority of the Scottish cricket community live too. Sandra White has tried 5 (FIVE) times to win a seat in the west of glasgow which, again, is as close to a cricketing hotbed as you get in Central Scotland. Perhaps this sort of ill advised outburst (which expresses a the view of a tiny and dying minority in the SNP) might explain why she has never troubled the scorers in electoral terms.

The Scottish Enlightenment

July 24th, 2009 8:10pm Report this comment

This is the true face of the SNP revealing itself behind the facade of pretence that they have adopted to gain votes. Behind this cuddly facade and their token English members lies a bigoted, anti-English, parochialism which is epitomised by Ms Grahame and Jim 'my favourite word is imperialism' Slavery.

Post comment