[This is one of a series describing
great Cities at a moment of apogee in their histories]
We Scots are immensely proud of our great capital city,
Edinburgh, with her historic Old Town, elegant Georgian and Victorian New Town,
her dominating Castle, superb setting on the Firth of Forth to the North and
the gentle Pentland Hills to the South.
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| A View of Edinburgh |
The City has witnessed many a significant national moment –
the erratic reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, the dogmatic ministry of John Knox,
the rejection of Charles I’s prayer book at St Giles, the brutally anarchic 1736 Porteous Riots, the brief seizure of the city by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s
Jacobites, the glories of the Scottish Enlightenment, the 1843 Disruption
splitting the Presbyterian Church of Scotland – sometimes moments of turmoil,
but a peaceful and cherished moment occurred on 12 May 1999 when the Scottish
Parliament, in abeyance since 1707, was re-inaugurated by H.M. The Queen,
accompanied by the new First Minister Donald Dewar.
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| Dewar is sworn in as First Minister |
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| Dewar and H M The Queen |
Few Scots could fail to be moved by the formal words intoned
by SNP’s Winnie Ewing, the most senior member: The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March
in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.
It must have been a particularly proud moment for Donald
Dewar whom I knew slightly. A lanky, rather shambolic figure, who learned his
razor-sharp debating skills at Glasgow University, he was witty – not suffering
fools gladly – but rational, fair-minded and politically cautious. Living
alone, his wife had left him for Labour Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, he
immersed himself in Scottish history and had piloted the Scotland Act, defining
devolved powers through Westminster In 1998. The temporary first home of the
new Scottish Parliament was the Kirk Assembly Hall on the Mound, where his hero
Thomas Chalmers, leader of the Free Church Disruption, had taught theology.
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| Kirk Assembly Hall and temporary site of the Scottish parliament (1999-2004) |
Edinburgh in 1999 was going through a fruitful period. Although
Labour won back power in 1997 after 18 years of Tory government, it still
pursued basically Thatcherite policies. Government interventions in business
were infrequent. Over the years Edinburgh had built itself up as a financial
centre, with ambitious local banks, well-regarded investment managers and
solidly-established insurance companies like Scottish Widows and Standard Life.
Royal Bank of Scotland was expanding quickly and a year later was to acquire
the much larger NatWest Bank, a tasty feast for driven Fred Goodwin, rising
star of the Bank. The other major local bank, Bank of Scotland, was to merge in
2001 with the Halifax Bank and embark on a headlong expansion.
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| RBS St Andrew Square |
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| Bank of Scotland Head Office |
Edinburgh was much more than a financial centre. Her
professionals, notably Scots lawyers and doctors were of a very high quality,
four universities graced the city led by the venerable Edinburgh University,
famed for its medical faculty and later its School of Informatics, studying
engineered computational systems with a speciality in artificial intelligence.
This had encouraged a lively IT industry. Secondary education was rated highly
with 20% of Edinburgh pupils attending private schools, like my own Alma Mater Merchiston Castle but
including Loretto and Edinburgh Academy.
The city’s atmosphere was mainly comfortably bourgeois but
there was a druggy and violent underside as depicted with some brio in Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting starring Ewan McGregor,
from Irvine Welsh’s novel. With a population of 495,000, Edinburgh’s largest
employer was the local authority – food manufacturing, brewing and hospitality
provided more jobs for working people. Scottish culture is now largely subsumed
by that of Britain but the Edinburgh Festival, created in 1947, now the largest
in the world, brings music, theatre, cinema and art of the highest standards to
the occasionally stolid burghers of the wind-swept city.
In 1999 Labour controlled the new Edinburgh Parliament. It
was well-represented in Westminster where incisive John Smith from Glasgow, and
a close friend of Donald Dewar, had been Labour leader 1992-4 until his
premature death aged 55. Labour’s new Prime Minister, persuasive Tony Blair,
was English but had been educated at Edinburgh’s Fettes College. His principal
lieutenant, powerful Gordon Brown, was at the Exchequer, while gnomic but
brilliant Robin Cook was Foreign Secretary. Alistair Darling, a safe pair of
hands, jumped from portfolio to portfolio – all 3 Edinburgh men.
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| Gordon Brown |
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| Robin Cook |
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| Alistair Darling |
But Fortune is a fickle goddess and her wheel turned against
Scotland. Donald Dewar had a fatal heart attack in 2000 on the steps of Robert
Adam’s elegant Bute House in Charlotte Square. The construction of the new
Parliament building at Holyrood was mismanaged; the original estimate of £109m
ballooned to £414m: similarly the later Edinburgh Tramway system, managed by
the council, cost £776m against an estimate of £545m and was years late. All
this damaged Labour whose support was being eroded rapidly by the nationalist
SNP. The 2007 economic crisis undermined Edinburgh’s financial sector; Bank of
Scotland had lent very unwisely and HBOS had to be rescued by Lloyds Bank: RBS
was worse, overreaching itself with fanciful global acquisitions. Too big to
fail, the UK government stepped in and even now still owns 73% of RBS’s equity.
The SNP tide proved to be strong. Under epicene Alex Salmond
it formed a minority Scottish administration in 2006 and a majority one in
2011. A reasonable competence was established. The Westminster government
permitted a referendum on independence in 2014 and the 55-45% vote in favour of
the union was a relief, but too close for comfort. More recently the collapse
in the global price of oil has ruined the economics of the North Sea Oil
industry, a lynch-pin in the SNP’s budgetary case. In 2015’s general election
Labour’s vote collapsed and the SNP won another 50 seats to add to its existing
6. The SNP was led by Nicola Sturgeon, a feisty Glaswegian, but narrow and
coarse-grained to my taste. There were signs of a Conservative revival in the
Scottish elections of 2016 under the vigorous leadership of Edinburgh’s Ruth
Davidson, but she is a kick-boxing Lesbian – not at all the tweedy, land-owning
Unionist with which I am more familiar!
Edinburgh changes constantly like any city. Her beauty
thankfully does not much change and I echo contemporary writer Alexander McCall
Smith’s words;
This is a city of shifting light, of changing
skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and
again.
For those who have never been,
come and visit. For those who know her well, refresh your spirit by savouring
again the city’s conviviality, fascinating history and friendly atmosphere.
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| Convivial Edinburgh |
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| Historic Edinburgh |
SMD
10.06.16
Text Copyright © Sidney
Donald 2016
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