SCOTTISH politics has been “deep frozen” since 2014 and the result of the referendum was about giving one last chance to “UK plc”, according to a leading playwright.
The latest work from Peter Arnott, which will premiere at Pitlochry Festival Theatre this month, looks at family relationships and the forces that shape Scotland today.
With the action taking place on one summer day in the run-up to the 2014 vote, it’s one of the first stage plays set against the backdrop of the referendum.
The nine-strong cast of “Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape” includes former Taggart actor John Michie, and the plot revolves around retired academic and political heavyweight George Rennie and his family and former students coming together for what is billed as a dramatic reckoning.
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Arnott told the Sunday National: “It has been very interesting as an exercise – in some ways, I don’t think it’s been possible to look back until now in a strange kind of way, that the moment of the referendum was kind of deep frozen.
“That extraordinary period afterwards was when the SNP membership went from 30,000 to 120,000, there were huge rallies and the 2015 election result.
“And in the sense that that moment was … although it was very celebratory, it was also deep frozen and Scottish politics has been frozen.”
Arnott said he also felt that recent developments in politics with the change in SNP leadership and the end of the “devolution generation” meant it was a timely moment to look back to the days of the referendum.
“You can look at what it felt like, you can look at what it meant, you can look at how it stood within a broader historical sweep of what’s been happening in Scotland,” he said.
“You’ve got characters who range in age from 70 to mid-20s and who have all got very, very different experiences and different backgrounds, and they’re all coming together in this moment.”
When it comes to how Scotland can escape the “deep frozen” moment, Arnott said he suspected it would take place “very, very slowly”, pointing to the gap between the 1979 devolution referendum and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
He said: “The character of Rennie at one point says to the character of Cat, who is an impatient nationalist: ‘I’m voting Yes but I don’t expect Yes to win.’
“She is outraged by this and says we can win by 1% and he says, ‘really? I was your age in 1979’.
“For me personally, I was 17 years old in 1979, so that’s one of my earliest political memories, handing out leaflets – the first time we ever did that. And it was 18 Tory years until 1997.”
Arnott said he believed what Scotland voted for in the 2014 referendum – with the result of 55% No and 45% for Yes – was to say “UK plc has got one more chance”.
“I don’t think that was really understood at all by Unionists,” he said.
“And implicit in that one more chance was one more Labour government in the UK.
“And I think now not only is the devolution generation no longer in charge of the nationalist political party, the devolution generation is done.
“And what happens next is the Scottish public, the voters, vote for one more Labour government.
“I think that they will judge what happens in the light of that Labour government.”
Arnott also argued the relationship of Scotland’s ruling classes with the Union had been “pragmatic” and based on where money, power and prestige was.
He added: “Is that now the case? Is Brexit Britain the place where the powers that be and civic society in Scotland are going to want to be in 10 years’ time, in 20 years’ time?
“I think that’s where the future is. It’s not just what happens in Britain, it’s what happens globally.
“There’s a line in the play, it’s said by somebody who thinks that nationalists, the Yes movement, is ridiculous.
“He says: ‘You really think that in the world, the way it’s going to be in 20, 30, 40, 50 years’ time, that the People’s Republic of Bearsden and Milngavie is where you are going to hide?’
“To which the reply is: ‘Well, yes, actually – and it’s not just hiding, it’s being part of the world.’
“That is the positive versus negative and everything comes down to that direction.”
He said there had been something “pragmatic” about the situation of Scotland being “stuck”, but Britain and the world was changing.
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“I feel now as I felt then that by saying Yes to self-government, we are saying we can be part of this world and we won’t just let things happen to us,” he said.
“If we say, ‘no thanks, we don’t want self-government’, then what we are saying is, ‘if you are going to hit me, hit me’.
“I do feel there is a kind of helplessness about that position.”
Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape will have its world premiere at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from August 25 to September 28 and then transfer to the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh from October 4 to 14.
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