Councillor Thomas Heald is a Scottish Conservative councillor for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, former Scottish Conservative and Unionist candidate for Dunfermline and former political advisor in the Scottish Parliament.
Alongside all of the major headlines in the last couple of weeks in the Scottish political world, drug deaths continuing to shame Scotland, an attainment gap that is only narrowing because the performance of better-off students is declining and the furore over proposed reforms of Scottish local government, one announcement snuck out underneath the headlines: the SNP’s intention to establish a National Performing Company for Traditional Music.
This is where I may lose some of you but hear me out.
The Scottish Government insists that this new state-owned company will ‘champion our musicians, raise the profile of traditional music around the world and give it the standing enjoyed by Scotland’s other national performing companies’.
I can see the appeal. Scotland has an extraordinary musical tradition, not least in Stirling where the Stirling and District Schools Pipe band continues to excel on the national and international stage, and performers deserve the opportunity to pursue music as a profession or hobby throughout their lives.
My contention is that Scottish music does not belong to any government, party or a constitutional cause. It belongs to the people who play it, teach it and turn up to hear it.
That might sound like I am stating the obvious, but this matters in a country where our culture and politics are often tangled together. The SNP has spent decades presenting itself as the political expression of Scottish identity. Its language encourages the idea that it alone speaks for Scotland, while those of us who disagree with its constitutional project somehow stand apart from the nation.
This is something which I have never signed up to. I am proud to call Scotland home and a committed Unionist and there is no contradiction between the two.
Yet the implication that there is one can creep into everything from political speeches to the way our national story is told. Now Ministers propose to create an official national company for traditional music. I am sure many of the musicians who welcome the idea do so for entirely practical reasons. They want opportunities to perform, earn a living and reach new audiences and they quite rightly deserve all of those things.
Politicians however need to be aware of the wider question of what this new institution will be perceived to represent. For example, who in this new quango decides which musicians, styles and traditions receive it’s attention or more importantly funding? In fact, why is creating a company more attractive than supporting the people and places which are already responsible for the thriving traditional music scene?
The strength of Scottish traditional music in the here and now is testament to the fact that nobody is in charge of it. You can hear it in pubs, village halls, schools and events and much of what makes it valuable would never appear neatly in a Scottish Government programme or fit neatly into a public body.
Music tuition in our schools is where the opportunity to play begins and I have spent most of my time as a councillor arguing this point. I know from my own childhood that to give a child access to an instrument and a good teacher is one the most valuable things we can give the generations to follow us. Music does not respect traditional class barriers, social standing or geography. It is the very epitome of equality of opportunity regardless of whether that child goes on to perform professionally or simply enjoy playing for the rest of their lives. The Scottish Government to their credit has supported free instrumental tuition and long may that continue however, neither of the outcomes in the previous sentence need the approval of a national company.
That is a better use of public money than establishing a new organisation at the top of the cultural tree. If Ministers have more to spend, they should ask what local tutors, young musicians, small venues and community groups need first. But then again, this is not the SNP way. Everything in a nationalist’s world view has to fit neatly into a box.
This is not an indifference to Scottish culture on my part, as a Scottish Conservative I care deeply about the traditions that we have inherited as a nation and we should understand that these traditions only stay alive because people choose to take part in them. The role of government is to help remove barriers to access rather than appoint itself the custodian of that shared inheritance that belongs to every one of us.
The SNP is entitled to make its case for independence, which it does frequently, and is also entitled to govern whilst it holds office. I wish they would do the latter more often than not but I have learned that this will never be the case. However, as we have seen over the last two decades, they are not entitled to blur the line between the SNP and Scotland itself. A national performing company will not turn folk musicians into SNP campaigners and I am not for a minute suggesting that it would, but my concern is with the steady nationalist instinct which places more of Scottish public life beneath institutions established and directed from Edinburgh.
A Government that genuinely respects Scottish culture should be comfortable with the fact that it cannot own or define it.
Scottish music is shared by people with every view on independence. A piper or fiddle player does not have to explain their constitutional position before joining a session or ask their audience what their view on the future of the Union is before enjoying a song together. The shared culture of traditional music gives us something in common even when our politics divides us.
It is also enriched by connections beyond Scotland. Scottish musicians play across the United Kingdom and around the world. They learn from Irish, English and many other traditions. None of that diminishes their Scottish identity and is evidence of a culture confident enough to meet others on equal terms.
That is the Scotland I recognise. It is more open, varied and interesting than any official version of national identity could be.
The Government is consulting on what its new company should look like. It ought to ask a more basic question: why create it at all?
If the aim is to help musicians, fund opportunities for them to perform. If the aim is to bring traditional music to young people, back the teachers and local groups who can do it. If the aim is to reach new audiences, support the venues and festivals already taking that risk. These are practical choices, not a new institution claiming a national mandate.
And the SNP needs reminding of something even more basic: being Scottish is not a political position.