Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Bibliography: p. 120-128.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 1989. / Title from web page (viewed on Mar. 4, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores arguments for Scottish Home Rule, and the place these arguments were given during elections. It also discusses the interactions between Scottish Home Rulers with other Home Rule movements within the United Kingdom as well as attempts to build international support in the colonies and United States. Finally it examines the cultural and scientific manifestations of nationalism and how they were embraced by a Home Rule movement which was eager to identify evidence for devolution. The position of Scottish Home Rule before the Great War was very complex. Although the Scottish Liberal Association adopted it as a policy as early as 1888 the most ardent of Scottish Home Rulers were continually disappointed by the failure of the Liberal Party’s leadership to commit to a time frame for introducing legislation. Despite this difficulty Scottish Home Rulers fought an uphill battle to keep the issue before the public through a significant body of pamphlets, journals, letters, and even in motions in the House of Commons. Between the second 1910 election and the Great War, the issue was kept in front of the Scottish Electorate and featured in almost all of the Liberal and Labour candidates’ campaigns during the fourteen by-elections which occurred during the period. Culturally new expressions of ‘Scottishness’ can be seen in the establishment of bodies such as the Royal Scottish Geographic Society, the Scottish Historical Review and the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. When these Scottish institutions ran into conflict with larger bodies based in England, usually associated with funding, the question of Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom came into question. At these times nationalists within and without of these institutions could co-opt these concerns in order to further their appeals for greater Home Rule. Although Scottish Home Rule was never a dominant movement within Scottish politics before the war it did manage to find acceptance among a wide body of individuals and groups such as the Scottish Liberal Association, Young Scots’ Society, Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, Highland Land League, Scottish Labour League and Scottish Liberal Women’s Association . This thesis will attempt to place Scottish Home Rule within the context of a time which saw the development of so many other great reforms and argue that although those who supported Scottish Home Rule did so for a variety of pragmatic reasons, the nationalistic ideology that Scotland should be governed by Scots, still found expression.

Alex Salmond, a talented politician in charge of Scotland's devolved government since 2007, is mounting the biggest challenge to the British union state in its 300-year history. His fast-growing Scottish National Party wants Scotland to cease being the invisible country of Europe and to embrace independence. This book argues that if the Union is demolished, change will remain elusive and Scotland will continue to be run by the close-knit administrative, commercial and religious elites who have dominated the country for centuries. Tom Gallagher contends that the SNP remains fixated by resentment towards England and has no strategy for reviving a struggling economy and the deep-seated social problems which disfigure urban Scotland. He argues that the SNP are not committed to independence, that the SNP is a super-unionist party, that it recoils from popular sovereignty and is an enthusiastic backer of the EU s plans for a post-national Europe based on federalist rule from Brussels, and that it endorses a radical multi-culturalism that devalues individual citizenship and places Scotland at the mercy of globalization. Gallagher's hard-hitting analysis will stir emotions and generate debate, especially his claim that if the SNP triumphs it will reinforce the authoritarian trends which have disfigured Scottish history and contributed to heavy emigration. He passionately believes that moral and practical energies need to be released if Scotland is to renew itself, but fears that as long as the country is seen in romantic and propagandistic terms, this overdue transformation will be stillborn.

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This thesis is a comprehensive study of the poetry of Norman MacCaig. His poems have received relatively little critical attention and scholars appear to have concentrated on a few specific points such as MacCaig’s characteristic restraint or his inscription in a given literary tradition. Critics have notably pointed out different dichotomies in his works. I argue that these dichotomies are fundamentally interrelated. It is characteristic of MacCaig’s writing to simultaneously engage with and challenge philosophical and linguistic concepts and positions as well as literary traditions and stylistic choices. These dichotomies are both a cause and a symptom of this phenomenon. They take on a structuring role in a body of works often regarded as a collection of independent lyrics rather than a cohesive totality. The first half of the thesis will follow a thematic approach: considering first the poetic project MacCaig outlines and the interplay of celebration, faithfulness to the object and the problem of perception; then the treatment of religion and the divine by this notoriously atheist author and how it relates to his worldview. This will provide a basis to address MacCaig’s lifelong concern with the relationship between perception, language and description and what this entails for both his writing and his philosophical positions. In the second half of this study, I will address MacCaig’s engagement with tradition – and its limits – through consideration of three different modes and how they relate to his writing project: elegy, pastoral and amatory verse, regarding the latter two as specific examples of the former. Through these interconnected studies of MacCaig’s poetry, I argue that the critical tendency to either undervalue his central place or treat his works in a fragmentary fashion originates in MacCaig’s sense of the instability of our perceptions and our possible discourses about the world. This uncertainty at the root of his writing reflects his constant and often uncomfortable awareness of the elusive nature of existence and meaning – death and the limits of language threatening both his perception of the world he evinces such fondness for and his ability to write about it.

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