Guest Column: Inferiority complex is stifling Scots culture

EWAN Brown, chairman of the interim body that will become Creative Scotland, has welcomed the appointment of Andrew Dixon as the new organisation's first chief executive on the grounds that it was not "parochial or local".

This seems to imply that he thinks Scotland is so backward and devoid of talent that it was essential to find someone from outside. Unfortunately, such an inferiority complex about Scotland is not unusual.

This is astonishing in a country which has contributed so much to civilisation. The richness of European culture depends on its diversity between the diverse nations and Scotland is part of that.

The trouble is that many Scots have been the victims of an education which has left them in almost complete ignorance of Scotland itself, and with the impression that everything of importance comes from England.

Of course England is a great country with a valuable cultural tradition, but it is different from our own. Gordon Donaldson, a former professor of Scottish history at Edinburgh University, used to say that the English had many great qualities, but that their weakness was to assume that everything English was the best and that anything Scottish was "peculiar, quaint, if not downright barbarous". Scots brought up in ignorance of their own past tend to agree.

The staff of the Scottish Arts Council, which Creative Scotland replaces, was very largely recruited from England. This probably accounts for their long delay in agreeing to the establishment of a National Theatre, until the Scottish Parliament took the decision, and to their evident resistance to its building up a repertoire of the best Scottish plays. Many of these plays are in Scots, which is the language of much of our best poetry, plays and the dialogue in novels. Is there any other country in the world that would staff its national theatre entirely from people of a different cultural tradition?

If Scottish culture is to flourish, it is vital that those employed to encourage, finance and manage it should have a knowledge and appreciation of its nature and content. But Andrew Dixon is again English, which is perhaps not surprising because another of them was employed to advise on the selection. He has, however, already spoken in a way which suggests that he is interested in Scotland and aware of our cultural traditions. That is what matters and this is an encouraging start.