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ARENA Working Papers |
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Scotland's Parliament:
This chapter considers the relationships between constitutional change, the news media, and the reshaping of political and communicative boundaries in the United Kingdom. We need to think again about these spaces because they are being reshaped from above and from below. The first source of pressure is the ineluctable march of the European Union into the heartlands of political life. And secondly, there is the imminent impact on the British state of an autonomous, national, Scottish polity, the first major step in a wider process of constitutional reform. Although the EU provides the wider framework for this discussion, the devolution of powers to a new Scottish parliament is my principal focus here. This is already propelling questions of media policy onto the public agenda in Scotland and provoking the development of a new political culture. Political communication and the nation-state Political communication - the purposive communication by political actors about politics - conventionally takes the nation-state as its framework. In everyday political life it is still generally assumed that the United Kingdom is a bounded, sovereign polity, with its own national political agenda, communicated by its own national media. This dominant view of the relations between national political space and national communicative space is still supported by a well-established perspective in the theory of nationalism, which needs to be revised, and is beginning to be so. Consider the line of work represented by, successively, Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and more recently Michael Billig. [1] All share a broad concern with how nations speak to themselves, how they mark themselves off, or flag themselves, as different from others. All theorise from within what Deutsch first labelled a 'social communications' perspective whose axial premise is that nations are set apart from other collectivities because of the special nature of their internal communications. Consequently, it is held that a given cultural collectivity tends to build up and secure a separate national identity over time. While each theorist may differ as to the key explanatory factor, it is commonly argued that educational systems, the media, standardised languages or shared cultural practices and symbols are key elements in the historical process of national-culture building. Such national cultures and resultant identities are assumed to be both politically underpinned and continually developed by a state. This underlying assumption has also been shared by the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas whose influential theory of communication initially took as its framework the nation addressed as a political community. Political communication within the nation need not necessarily take a democratic form. However, in Habermas' theory, and in the work of the many scholars who have tried to develop it further in recent years, it is precisely how to ensure access to communicative power by citizens that has become a central concern. [2] Much current discussion has centred on the so-called 'public sphere', a term promoted in academic discourse through the English translation of Habermas's work, and now in relatively wide use. This refers to the domain of debate that exists outside the state, but which is centred on the state's activities and engages all who are concerned with matters of public interest. This is the space of civil society, where political parties, voluntary associations and organised interests may intervene in the political process. The existence of such a domain - in which the media are also situated - is central to the freedom of expression commonly associated with democracy. Thus conceived, the public sphere presupposes a nation-state in relation to which civil society can think and organise politically. The public sphere is therefore commonly seen as co-extensive with the political form of nation-statehood. This view has a bearing on the present-day functioning of political communication in the United Kingdom because in reality the dominant model of the nation-state as a unitary political community, as a stable locus in which we speak to ourselves about politics and public affairs, is breaking down. Symptomatic is the persistent line of media commentary on the difficulties of defining 'Britishness'. An important, and highly visible, part of the Blair government's politics has been the effort to 'rebrand' the United Kingdom and give it a new identity. The discourse of modernised Britishness is the happy hunting-ground of the think-tank intelligentsia. In 1997, the political annexation of the sentiments generated by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (apparently, for some, a rediscovery of Britons' lost capacity for feeling), the selling of 'cool Britannia', the enforced quasi-modernisation of the monarchy, the aspirations for an undefined grandeur embodied in the New Millennium Experience - all betokened attempts to grapple with a deep-seated problem of collective identity. As devolution in Scotland and Wales becomes imminent, and as 'Britain' and 'Britishness' start to disaggregate, the attempts to characterise 'Englishness' are gathering pace. Whether the first-term programme of New Labour constitutional reform - with elections taking place under PR systems, proposed Freedom of Information legislation, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, the intended abolition of hereditary peers, and an elected mayor for London - will result in a more united kingdom remains to be seen. As a modernising programme it is certainly intended to result in a new cohesion of the state, but conceivably it could provoke gradual disintegration. The communicative challenge of 'Europeanisation' We can less and less sensibly think of the UK as a sovereign political and communicative space because issues arise, and agendas appear, that derive from the broader political domain of the European Union, and these cannot simply be screened out. The compelling question of Britain's position on European Monetary Union (EMU) is the prime illustration of this. By opting to delay entry to the European single currency, the British government has in effect placed itself on the sidelines. On this decision hangs the future economic performance of the UK as well as the British state's political influence. A telling, if less fundamental example, has been the EU's key role in repeatedly deciding the terms of trade and outcomes of the Bovine Spongiform Encepalopathy (BSE) crisis. The British practice of politics has been steadily 'Europeanised' as Westminster has ceased to be the sole arbiter of decision-making. Moreover, increasingly, the question of Britain's approach to European integration has the capacity to make and break political parties. After all, long-standing internal divisions over 'Europe' had a decisive role in shattering the long Conservative hold over the country both before, and during, the General Election of 1997. The increasing centrality of European integration for the future of British politics deeply affects how we should think about the nation-state as a locus of political communication, in which journalism plays a key role alongside the promotional activities of a range of political actors including state agencies, parties, and pressure groups. As debates about major European policy issues routinely occur in the domestic heartlands of the polity, and are manifestly central to the agendas of British news media, the lines between 'us' (the British) and 'them' (the Continentals) are becoming increasingly blurred. So while, routinely, the EU may be represented as external to the British political system, in reality it is increasingly internal to it. The often distance-taking political rhetoric and prevalently negative media coverage obscure this fact. However, these are surface reactions to a deeper movement. It is hard to see clearly the real, underlying, extent of the current change in politico-communicative boundaries precisely because how the highly complex relationship between the EU and the UK is handled both politically and in news coverage varies from moment to moment. Two brief illustrations from my research in progress on contemporary political communication support this view. [3] In May 1996, for example, the volume of radio and television coverage of a number of European stories (notably reconsideration by the EU of the export ban on British beef) showed a marked increase over previous months. Moreover, the range of political figures given access to the airwaves significantly increased, with sources from several EU member states playing a major role in British debate. At the time, a matter of major UK national interest was being decided not at Westminster but in Brussels. Irrespective of the arguments, it was evident that the UK's broadcast forums of political argument and reporting had opened up to include the EU's spokespeople. In a marked shift, then, the EU's political space for a moment directly overlapped with the UK's, becoming an integral part of British communicative space. Although such moments of relative openness occur, there may also be a countervailing tendency to closure, illustrated during the British General Election campaign of 1997. On 21 April, Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, intervened with a swingeing attack on 'Euro-sceptics'. General Election campaigns are moments of national self-enclosure, when domestic concerns swell in importance and completely dominate political debate and media agendas. The polity could hardly be more self-absorbed at such times, so Santer's attack on the Euro-sceptics, coupled with his uncompromising federalist agenda, played directly into the British political battlefield. Both the political class, and the press, were largely unanimous about putting Jacques back in his box, with some chauvinistic insults thrown in for good measure. For the Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, this was a chance to defend the British national interest and reassert his anti-federalism, whereas for the Labour aspirant, Tony Blair, it was a moment to blow the patriotic trumpet and reaffirm his gold-plated Britishness. On this occasion the EU, through the symbolic figure of the Commission's President, could easily be represented as alien and intrusive, even dictatorial, and the speech as a gross interference in domestic politics - an affront to national sovereignty. Such divergent instances suggest that both the political debate and media reporting of the EU in Britain may shift along a continuum of relative openness and closure to European perspectives and arguments. However, the introjection of European matters into British political and communicative space is undeniable and not as just another story, but rather as one integral to the secular melting-down of EU member states' boundaries. European integration is beginning to have an unevenly distributed impact both on conceptions of citizenship and of collective belonging. After all, since the 1991 Treaty of Union (signed at Maastricht), the category of EU citizenship has existed alongside established national citizenship, and although its precise implications have been a matter of debate, it has introduced a new layer of complexity and of potential loyalty. This may, in time, produce another form of collective identity - 'Europeanness' - for the citizens of member states. Political theory is beginning to catch up with the realities on the ground. Indicatively, in his more recent work, Jürgen Habermas has written of the European Union as itself constituting a complex public sphere, where the historic nation-states articulate with an emergent federal state - a viewpoint, incidentally, that neglects the place of stateless nations. If such a new European polity is indeed emerging, it is still embyronic. However, this rethinking of political space transforms the conventional role of political communication as a vehicle for addressing a nation-state-centred public and compels us to consider its relation to a putative supranational public. [4] The corollary of the enlargement of the public sphere is that a European civil society must eventually emerge, the nucleus of which already exists in the policy communities clustered around the EU's executive and legislative institutions. We might now, in retrospect, re-read almost two decades of tortured debates in the EU about the role of the media as variously helping to build a common culture, or an information society, or a democratic public, as reflecting the Union's developing impact on the communicative spaces still jealously guarded by the member states. This effect is likely to increase as European Monetary Union impels greater de facto federalisation and as communication policy frameworks established in Brussels increasingly constrain member states. [5] Scotland's quiet 'democratic revolution' If 'Europeanisation' is by stages redefining the space of political communication in Britain, so too is the current internal reshaping of the state due to the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales. Decentralisation is a widespread feature of contemporary politics in most EU member states, and the UK is finally aligning itself with the European trend towards 'subsidiarity', the doctrine that no political issue should be decided at a level higher than is absolutely necessary. [6] The New Labour victory on 1 May 1997 placed home rule for the two countries firmly back on the British political agenda after almost two decades, initiating what constitutional reformers such as Anthony Barnett see as a 'democratic revolution'. Constitutional change is truly fundamental, as Barnett notes, because it embodies 'the set of relationships that proposes how a country is run', and therefore profoundly affects the institutional core of a society and how people live their everyday lives. [7] In Scotland, the government published its devolution White Paper, Scotland's Parliament, in July 1997, a moment of restrained triumph for the Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar. [8] This was rapidly followed by a two-question referendum on 11 September 1997 in which voters were asked to decide whether there should be a Scottish Parliament and whether this body should have the power to vary taxation. A telling majority of Scots voted for political autonomy. After the devastation of the Conservatives in the May election, there was little serious opposition from those in favour of the centralist status quo. The 'Yes-Yes' campaign unprecedentedly brought together Scotland's two main devolutionist parties, Labour and the Liberal-Democrats, with the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). The referendum implicitly identified the Scots as a civic nation, as voting was open only to residents of Scotland, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds or places of birth. Ethnic Scots outside the country had no voting rights. This is an important benchmark, though still little appreciated, for future political discourse about 'the nation' in Scotland. On a turn-out of 60.4 per cent, in response to the first question, 74.3 per cent supported the creation of a Scottish Parliament, while, in response to the second, 63.5 per cent agreed that the proposed legislature should have tax-varying powers. The 1997 vote was a milestone, as it turned around the result of the previous referendum of 1979. Support for a Scottish Parliament with wide powers, within the United Kingdom, finally addressed the 'unfinished business' of constitutional reform, expressing 'the settled will of the Scottish people', in the two resonant phrases of the late Labour Party leader and convinced devolutionist, John Smith. Any future choice will now be between remaining in the Union and outright independence. The extensive pro-devolutionary shift during the Conservative years did not come out of the blue. The Tories had become steadily more beleaguered north of the Border. By the 1992 General Election, the Conservatives had been returned in only 11 of the 72 Scottish seats. 1997 was a turning-point for them, as they lost all their Scottish seats. The disjuncture between increasingly unpopular Conservative rule from Westminster and the small Tory representation in Scotland had contributed to a widespread sense of disenfranchisement over the years. The various campaigns waged against devolution after 1992 by John Major and his successive Scottish Secretaries Ian Lang and Michael Forsyth thus proved to be ineffective in saving the party from electoral collapse in 1997. Much of the groundwork for the July 1997 White Paper and subsequent Bill was prepared through the patient work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which first met in March 1989. Little known outside Scotland, this has been a crucial vehicle for key elements of Scottish civil society to devise a common approach to devolution. Contributing to the Convention's initial impetus was a resentment of the strident centralism of Margaret Thatcher. This had led to the widespread sense that Scotland was not adequately represented by Westminster politics. The Convention brought together Scotland's dominant Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, also including other minor parties and representatives of a wide range of interests such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the women's movement, local councils, and the churches. The core of its political project was the restoration of Home Rule to Scotland within the framework of the United Kingdom. Both the anti-devolution Conservatives and the independence-oriented SNP refused to join. [9] To legitimise its opposition to the constitutional status quo, the Convention invoked the will of the Scottish nation. By seeing sovereignty as vested in 'the people' rather than in the Crown-in-Parliament at Westminster, it drew a sharp distinction between Scottish and English constitutional thinking. The Convention also pointed to decentralising developments in the European Union to bolster its intellectual case. As an expression of civil society, it could draw both on the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment and find inspiration in civic movements intent on promoting political change and democratisation in East-Central Europe. Crucially, the work of the Constitutional Convention was coupled with the largely supportive agenda-setting role amongst the 'blethering classes' of the Scottish broadsheet press, which showed a consistent interest in its activities, as did Scottish broadcasters. The Convention managed to maintain a remarkably broad political consensus over a period of eight years. It produced a series of key documents - notably A Claim of Right for Scotland (1989) and Scotland's Parliament; Scotland's Right (1995) - which set the stage in 1997 for the eventual White Paper, Scotland's Parliament (July) and the subsequent historic Scotland Bill (December), whose provisions are very far-reaching. [10] Devolution means that Scotland will legislate in all major areas except those reserved to Westminster, principally, the constitution, UK financial matters, foreign policy, defence, social security and citizenship. Given our present concern with communication, it is crucial to note that powers over broadcasting have been reserved to Westminster. Powers in Scotland will encompass key areas such as health, education, local government, economic development and transport, environment, agriculture, forestry and fishing, law and home affairs, sport and the arts, and permit a tax-varying power of up to 3 per cent of basic income tax. The first general election will be in 1999, and the Parliament will first meet in 2000. There will initially be 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), 73 elected by the first-past-the-post system in existing Westminster constituencies, with an additional member voting system electing 56 members from party lists, seven from each of the eight European parliamentary constituencies. The parliament's size will decrease when Scottish representation at Westminster is eventually reduced. Scotland's press and national identity Since the Act of Union of 1707 (when Scotland's last parliament was dissolved), the country has retained its separate legal and educational systems and church, all of which, with differing importance over time, have contributed to the shaping of a distinct national culture. Since 1886, the national institutional matrix has also had a territorial political and administrative dimension in the shape of the Scottish Office. The case for a parliament has latterly been made in terms of the need to extend democratic control over this bureaucratic structure. Scotland's media are a crucial element of the country's civil society. Their role in the development of the new Scottish political culture once the parliament is established will be substantial. They are part of the range of institutions that have been the substratum of Scottish distinctiveness within the UK. It is not surprising, therefore, that Scots have the option of a dual national identity, Scottish and/or British. The current evidence suggests that Scottishness is increasingly preferred over Britishness. [11] The creation of a Scottish Parliament is a key test bed for sociological and political analyses concerned with the 'stateless nation'. It seems that the British multi-national state is likely to experience the strains of 'asymmetrical government' if English regionalism does not take off following Scottish and Welsh devolution. [12] Thus far, there have some competitive regionalist stirrings in England's North-East, but how deep-rooted these are is open to question. Unlike any other British region, for most Scots the 'national media' are based not in London, but rather 'located in Scotland, within a UK framework of ownership, control, finance and regulation. The semi-autonomous status of the Scottish media thus parallels that of other features of Scottish political and economic life'. It has been argued that 'in many respects the media in Scotland have their own distinctive characteristics and can be said to contribute, particularly in the case of the press, to Scotland's self-perception as a nation'. [13] In fact, it is unclear to just what extent the self-conscious identification with Scotland of the Scottish-based press, radio and television promote a sense of distinctive Scottishness amongst the public. While some might argue that the media do significantly shape Scottish identity, others have speculated that the distinctiveness of the Scottish media has been shaped by the pre-existing national culture. [14] Whatever the precise causal relation, for present purposes we may assume that there is an intimate reciprocal connection between the media consumption patterns of the Scottish public and Scottish national and regional identities. In the long run-up to the 1997 General Election, devolution was a topic of exceptionally intensive and extensive media interest north of the Border, especially so when systematically compared with coverage in the London-based press and broadcasting. Subsequently, this distinctive pattern of attention has been sustained during the reporting of the devolution White Paper, the Referendum and the publication of the Scotland Bill, maintaining the south's communication deficit. It could be argued that a fracture line runs through the UK when it comes to public dissemination of the implications of Scottish devolution. As my concern here is with political communication strictly understood, I shall limit myself to giving a brief account of some of the most significant Scottish news media, underlining how they differ from the London-based UK media. Clearly, to explore other dimensions of the relationships between media and national identity one would cast the net much more widely in the media culture, to take in mainstream broadcast sport, music, comedy, drama, talk shows, phone-ins, magazines, advertising and cinema as well as Scottish Office supported Gaelic television production. Readership figures are a crude indicator of consumption preferences, and tell us nothing of the meanings attributed to what is read. However, they do indicate the strong hold that Scottish-produced and headquartered newspapers exercise in the country, when compared with most of those published south of the Border. Scotland has an old-established daily quality press in the shape of The Herald (Glasgow, founded 1783) and The Scotsman (Edinburgh, founded 1817). Jointly, these newspapers dominate the opinion-leading market in, respectively, West and East Central Scotland, the belt where most of the population is concentrated. Between them, in 1996-97, these two titles reached more than 13 per cent of readers, whereas the five London broadsheets together attracted some 8 per cent. [15] The popular end of the daily newspaper market is also extremely distinctive. It is dominated by the Daily Record (founded 1895, and Britain's oldest popular daily newspaper). The country's leading daily tabloid, the Record has a readership of more 1.8 million, or a reach of 44 per cent of Scotland's adults, and is especially read in the west of the country. Its nearest rival is the Scottish Sun, with around a quarter of the readership. Against these front-runners, London titles such as the Daily Mirror or the Daily Star have very modest sales by the usual tabloid standards. The middle market has recently been prone to penetration by Scottish editions of London newspapers, with both the Scottish Daily Mail and theScottish Daily Express each building significant readerships of over a quarter of a million. However, their undeniably significant reach needs to be considered in relation to the continuing 'city state' character of Scotland's press. Mid-market tabloid circulations are matched by those of Dundee's Courier and Aberdeen's Press and Journal (founded 1748). Sunday newspaper sales are also markedly dominated by Scottish titles. The Record's stable-mate, the Sunday Mail, reaches almost half the adult Scottish readership, with the Sunday Post pushing near to forty per cent. The only southern title to come close is the News of the World, with virtually a quarter of Scottish readers. The quality end of the market shows the Sunday Times to be a close rival to Scotland on Sunday, each reaching some 7 per cent of readers. Unlike its southern broadsheet counterparts, however, the Sunday Times sold north of the Border is thoroughly Scottish in content and perspectives. The Scottish press, therefore, penetrates everyday life, and while it is certainly true that some Scottified English titles have made major inroads of late, they have had to adapt themselves to the Scottish market in order to succeed. Pressures to focus even more on national developments can only increase with the advent of the Edinburgh parliament. The media politics of the market-place There have been significant changes of ownership in the two quality daily newspapers, which have a disproportionately significant role in setting the agenda of Scottish affairs. In one case, that of The Herald, this was part of the pre-devolutionary manoeuvrings of what was to become the Scottish Media Group (SMG) in May 1997, provoking concern about media concentration, the more so after SMG bought up Grampian Television. In the other, editorial changes at The Scotsman have had ramifications for the debate over devolution. In July 1996, Caledonian Newspapers, owner of The Herald and the Glasgow Evening Times, accepted a bid from Scottish Television, the ITV Central Scotland licensee. Scottish Television's executive chairman, Gus Macdonald, unashamedly played the Scottish card in a pre-election year, saying: 'I think we need a strong and robust media in Scotland and that combining the two businesses will help counter the very negative effects of power being sucked down to London'. [16] While Scottish Television's majority ownership is in Scottish hands, 20 per cent of the company's shares are owned by the London-based Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which also owns the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, two of Scotland's biggest-selling titles. Following expressions of public concern about the possibility of ownership concentration in the newspaper market, the Scottish Television-Caledonian merger was officially cleared by both the Independent Television Commission in October 1996 (applying a public interest test) and the Department of Trade and Industry (following a report from the Office of Fair Trading). Scottish Television's other growth-point was in its home territory of television. It had long been supposed that the Glasgow-based company, broadcasting to the major Scottish central belt market, would bid for Grampian Television, headquartered in Inverness in Scotland's North-East. Once the provisions of the 1996 Broadcasting Act had come into effect, Grampian, which was showing improved pre-tax profits, became particularly vulnerable to take-over, as the Act allowed a single television company to reach up to 15 per cent of the entire UK audience. The bid came in June 1997, the month following the General Election, and was accepted by the Grampian shareholders. The proposed merger brought 4.7 of the 5.1 million Scottish viewers within SMG's purview. Concern was expressed in various quarters about a concentration of television ownership, about job losses, and the possible loss of a regional programming identity for Grampian viewers - a touchy issue since regional politics are likely to be rather significant in the Scottish parliament. The ITC mounted an inquiry on public interest grounds and found in SMG's favour, saying that it expected the regional provisions of the two companies' separate licences to be honoured, a point recently re-emphasised by the ITC's chairman. What was thrown into relief, and has fuelled the continuing, if still sporadic, expressions of public concern, has been the recognition that the rules designed to regulate concentration and audience share in the UK-wide market were simply not designed to take account of Scotland considered as a political entity, as opposed to its being regarded as a territory divided among three ITV regions. The politics of home rule are bound increasingly to underline the extent to which Scotland is a distinctive national market - that is, a political economy - in its own right. Grampian's incorporation into SMG meant that the group now controlled some ninety per cent of the Scottish television audience for the main terrestrial commercial television channel. Only those viewers served by Border Television, remained outside SMG's reach. From a UK perspective, the Scottish-Grampian merger was small beer and merely part of a flurry of government facilitated take-overs in the ITV sector that had led to three big players south of the Border. However, in a small country, a unique multi-media concentration both has a good deal of influence and considerable political visibility. SMG pre-emptively built up its strength during the last year of Tory rule. Recognising that UK legislation dealt with Scotland as a market but not as a polity, it sought assurances that Labour, if elected, had no intention of changing this. Politicians of all stripes were willing to play the Scottish card in 1996. SMG's subsequent calculation - in line with both the White Paper and the Scotland Bill - has been that UK regulation will stay in place and that the Edinburgh parliament will have no regulatory or legislative competence in the field of broadcasting. With 80 per cent of its programmes and 85 per cent of its advertising coming though the ITV network, Scottish Television stresses its place in British broadcasting. Complaining that ITV was already overregulated, Bob Tomlinson, SMG's head of public affairs, has maintained that vesting any powers in Edinburgh would be 'unwarranted, impractical and costly' and that the approach needed was 'hands off, light touch, and let us get on with the job'. [17] Despite this call for the status quo, the advent of a Scottish parliament is likely to ensure that cross-media ownership and concentration in Scotland will remain an issue. Questions were first raised by the Broadcasting for Scotland Campaign when Caledonian Newspapers was bought, reflecting concern about an eventual take-over of Scottish Television by the Mirror Group. Criticism has more recently been clearly articulated by the SNP, which, without impugning SMG's record, has argued that it would be generally prudent to have separate 'anti-trust' laws for the media sector. Change at The Scotsman has been of interest because of editorial rather than structural changes, at least for the present. In October 1996, Andrew Neil was appointed editor-in-chief of Scotsman Publications. The company, owned by Frederick and David Barclay's European Press Holdings, groups The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, and the Edinburgh Evening News. Neil's remit also includes The European. Rumours abound of European Press Holdings' apparent interest in purchasing The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. A successful bid would bring together quality newspapers at the European, UK, and Scottish levels - a quite different strategy from the pan-Scottish multi-media approach of SMG. Neil's appointment caused a stir among media commentators, given the long-standing commitment to devolution of The Scotsman and its Sunday stable-mate. His adamant opposition to independence and his dismissive views of what he sees as Scotland's 'monotonic' left-of-centre consensus goes back to his time at The Sunday Times which consistently attacked devolution in its Scottish edition. [18] Neil's appointment, and consequent editorial changes, have certainly brought more astringent questioning to the practicalities of devolution, tempered by an acceptance that this will now indeed be the new political order. Neil summed up his mission thus in June 1997: 'I had laid down that our titles must be broadly in favour of the market economy, defenders of the union between Scotland and England and prepared to tackle head on the many outdated Scottish shibboleths and collectivist attitudes which still dominate politics north of the border. None of this conflicted with backing Blair...[who]...himself told me he hoped I might be able to stir things up... .' [19] In the run-up to the establishment of the parliament in Edinburgh, a new phase of struggle for primacy in the quality market is under way between The Scotsman and The Herald. This is linked to the ancient rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow, with fears in the west of Scotland that the country's biggest city will lose out by the capital's reinforced importance. Inside The Herald it is recognised that The Scotsman has the advantage of a winning brand-name when national appeal is going to be ever more resonant. That said, the Scottish Media Group has set up a joint Edinburgh office for The Herald and Scottish Television and evidently plans major coverage of the parliament. Broadcast journalism and regulation At the same time as building an increasingly dominant position in Scotland's media landscape, Scottish Television has also used its Scottishness to argue for more independence from the UK network, notably in news scheduling. This initiative, in Gus Macdonald's words to me, 'detonated the debate', with Scotland's other big terrestrial television player, BBC Scotland, subsequently initiating a far-reaching review. Macdonald has argued for 'country' membership of the ITV network - in effect, for a looser, affiliate status - since late 1996. The aim is to reduce Scottish's commitment to the network, paying only for the programmes it wants. In justification, Scottish Television has claimed that it could choose to produce more programmes with high production values, such as drama and entertainment, with benefits for local audiences. Relatedly, SMG spokesmen have suggested that Scottish Television might opt out of network programming to cover the Edinburgh parliament and floated the idea that Scottish news delivered by the early evening flagship programme, Scotland Today, might be combined with UK and international stories in a 60-minute programme. [20] An early evening news that pulls together these elements now seems likely. Such a Scottish news programme would have a major impact on the broadcast media agenda north of the Border and would challenge ITN's present role in supplying identical UK-wide news to all commercial television contractors. BBC Scotland also has to decide on the appropriate journalistic response to devolution. Even if its management wished to, it could not easily effect a semi-detached relationship to London since, like its Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts, it operates as a 'national region' within a unitary corporation. Each 'national region' has a special Broadcasting Council to act as a policy forum, and its own Controller and senior management, with lines of responsibility to London. Although it is the only pan-Scottish terrestrial news and current affairs broadcaster, the BBC's Scottish radio and television services differ. BBC Radio Scotland is a general national station - a rarity these days - and has no single direct competitor in Scotland, although it does compete with commercial local radio. The station has had a broad remit since being launched in 1978 in anticipation of a Scottish Assembly. Created with the expectation of constitutional change in mind, its journalistic role in a devolved Scotland may be expected to be rather important, affecting radio coverage generally. Spokesmen for commercial stations have already anticipated extra expenditure on speech programming. While Radio Scotland's news and current affairs coverage has its detractors, it is nonetheless wide-ranging, and puts a distinctive Scottish slant on the stories and issues covered. Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland operates as the equivalent of Radio 4's Today Programme. In ways analogous to the Scottish broadsheet press, Radio Scotland's morning news progamme has a major agenda-setting role. Significantly, it attracts four times more Scottish listeners than its London-based counterpart. BBC Television Scotland provides a distinct news service and some current affairs programmes, as well as other programmes such as drama, music, comedy and sport. However, by contrast with the comprehensive Scottish national radio service, it takes the bulk of its programming from the two BBC UK networks, opting-out with specific programmes for Scottish viewers. It also supplies network programming, notably drama and comedy. While the Scottish ITV stations retain a regional remit, the 'national regional' BBC Scotland takes the whole country as its territory in news and current affairs coverage, such as the early evening flagship news programme, Reporting Scotland, and the current affairs programme, Frontline Scotland. The BBC's role under a devolved Parliament was summed up thus by the Controller, Scotland, John McCormick, in November 1997: 'Our aim is to ensure that we provide an unrivalled journalistic service that matches the new pattern of governance of the UK'. [21] The centrality of journalism both accords with the corporation's public service mission and the BBC's global strategy of developing its presence as a news and information provider. Certainly, there is no intention of departing from the BBC's unitary structure. McCormick has stated that according to audience research the corporation is valued as an organisation by the Scottish public, and that there is no demand to break it up. However, since BBC Scotland describes itself as the cornerstone of the broadcasting industry in Scotland, it has also recognised that its activities will be properly scrutinised by the Scottish parliament. But this is not seen as replacing the existing form of accountability through the Governors to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Scottish Television similarly sees itself as continuing to be regulated through the ITC, whose chairman, Sir Robin Biggam, has dismissed the prospect of separate Scottish broadcasting regulation, while conceding that national sensibilities will have to be addressed. [22] While Scottish Television initiated the debate on the journalism most suited to Scotland's new political landscape, it is BBC Scotland that has followed up the issue in detail by creating working groups to assess parliamentary coverage, newsgathering, the pattern of news output, and weekly current affairs. Gus Macdonald remarked to me that SMG intended to await the outcome of the BBC's review in spring 1998 before deciding on its own course of action. According to McCormick, the reviews will open a period of consultation with the audience. Although on the more fundamental question of regulation, the BBC, like SMG, has followed the White Paper and the Scotland Bill, which have reserved broadcasting powers to Westminster, this has been challenged by the SNP, which tabled an amendment to the Scotland Bill. The party considers that in order to protect the national culture, both public sector and commercial broadcasting should be under the legislative control of Edinburgh. This argument will probably gain impetus. However, the SNP has not indicated how it will take account of the long-standing British tradition of arms-length broadcasting regulation, which differs considerably from direct parliamentary control. The SNP is presently making the running on Scottish media policy issues. Aside from the Liberal-Democrats' general expressions of concern about media concentration and the maintenance of ITV's federalism, both Labour and the Conservatives seem content with the status quo. But this complacency is likely to be shaken up as the UK regulatory regime is generally rethought due to policy initiatives taken by the European Commission. Scottish, British and EU media policy dynamics will therefore intersect in the run-up to the creation of the new parliament. If substantial changes occur in the broadcasting field at Westminster before the Edinburgh legislature first convenes, this will probably cause political problems. Currently, in line with the government's view embodied in the Scotland Bill, BBC Scotland, Scottish Television, and Channel 4 have so far rejected any radical change either to broadcasting finance or control. However, pressure for a more or less radical shift of powers to Edinburgh is bound to continue. Debate is likely to be fuelled by the activities of the Campaign for Broadcasting in Scotland, which has argued for the devolution of structures. The Campaign's chairman, Nigel Smith, has proposed that BBC Scotland control both the Scottish licensing fee and the scheduling of network services in Scotland and that Channel 4 develop a distinct Scottish service on the lines of the Welsh S4C. [23] The SNP's George Kerevan, fronting the media pressure group, Voice for Scotland, has argued for the Scottish parliament to have a say in the forthcoming renewal of the ITV franchises. The consumer lobby, Voice of the Listener and Viewer, has latterly provided a platform for discussion of broadcasting and devolution. Such interventions are a foretaste of what is to come. From political culture to politicised market-place While it is too early to judge how Scotland's much-mooted 'new politics' will develop, rhetorically, at least, important gestures have been made. The watchword from Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, and Henry McLeish, the devolution minister, has been 'accessibility'. Dewar has said of political reporting that 'We are not likely to wish to recreate the lobby system'. [24] It remains to be seen precisely what arrangements will be worked out with the new Scottish Parliamentary Press Association. McLeish, for his part, has considered how cable and digital technology might be used to increase public access. Scottish Office ministers have also talked of opening up the parliament to pressure groups and the public. The potential for Scotland to develop a distinct information regime under its own legal system was rather dramatically illustrated at the turn of 1998. English media were unable to name the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, when his son had been charged with a drugs offence. However, the legal constraints did not apply north of the Border. The Scotsman, Daily Record and Scottish Daily Mail decided to break the wall of silence (already breached on the Internet and in foreign newspapers), precipitating UK-wide media coverage. Legal differences apart, what would enable Scotland to set a different course would be a political consensus on greater freedom of information in Edinburgh, made easier by the absence from the parliament's remit of such security-obsessed areas as foreign affairs, defence and finance The use of the additional member system in parliamentary elections - modifying Westminster's first-past-the-post tradition - and the apparent determination of the 'Yes-Yes' parties both to ensure a gender balance in Edinburgh, as well as to employ a more consensual style in parliamentary committees, could all contribute to giving Scottish political culture a quite distinctive style and flavour. In such programmatic strands, the continuing influence of the Constitutional Convention is still perceptible. The Referendum brought the SNP into the parliament-building fold through collaboration in the umbrella group, Scotland Forward. [25] The post-Referendum inquest on the Scottish Conservative Party under Lord Strathclyde has ensured that it, too, will use the new arena to relaunch itself. A four-party parliamentary dynamic, with each party vying to devise the most authentically popular Scottish policies, will look strikingly different from Westminster, and may well lead to new political alignments. It is already clear that the Scottish parliament will be a focus not just for the news media but that it will reorientate the whole gamut of activities from public relations and lobbying to marketing and advertising to telecommunications. Devolution will enhance the country's international recognition and, internally, a strengthened sense of Scottishness will mean that proximity to consumers is essential for companies eager to exploit national tastes on behalf of their clients. Consequently, communications companies have been keen to establish themselves in Scotland. Of the mainstream media, Channel 4 has made an adaptive gesture towards devolution by establishing a new office in Glasgow, with Stuart Cosgrove as head of programmes for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is a widespread expectation in the creative community that the increased relevance of national identity will be reflected in the broad range of films, radio and television output. The political market-place is also developing, with political and public affairs companies keen to exploit the new opportunities. Moves are afoot to set up an association of professional lobbyists, and bearing recent Westminster experience in mind, to try and establish a 'sleaze-free' rule-book. There is also increased interest in setting up think-tanks to influence the policy process. Not only has there been a growth of activity in advertising and marketing firms but also in the reprofiling of telecommunications. For instance, BT has declared its interest in the restoration of trust in the political process, and underlined the role of IT in promoting electoral involvement through training and education and remote working for MSPs. Already evident, therefore, in anticipation of the Edinburgh legislature's opening is an intricate and intimate relationship between a reshaped political culture and a wider political market-place. This new institutional nexus will become a key part of Scotland's civil society and a major dimension of a redrawn national communicative space. The New Labour obsession with 'rebranding' Britain has found its modest northern counterpart in the focused marketing of Scotland. Currently, research is being undertaken by the Scottish Enterprise-funded body, Scotland the Brand, into 'Scottishness' and its exploitability in advertising and the packaging of Scottish goods. The underlying aim, endorsed by the Scottish Office, is to bring together the marketing of trade, tourism and culture. Although, confirmed devolutionist that he is, Donald Dewar situated Scotland's branding in the context of UK government policy, he also made it clear that it was in response to Scottish national promotional needs. Scotland the Brand's new country of origin device, unveiled in November 1997, is the word 'Scotland', in signature style, in which Saltire blue gives way to tartan. The logo is intended to be used across the range of products and services - food, drink, textiles, financial and medical services, engineering, the universities - and while it has yet to win widespread support, by December 1997 it had been already adopted by 150 companies. The choice of tartan as one of the official manifestations of Scottishness - which has aroused negative reactions from those concerned about a modern image for Scotland - is discrepant with the Blair government's self-styled modernism. During the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, held in Edinburgh in October 1997, New Labour decided to ban thistles, tartans and bagpipes as outmoded, provoking the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, to condemn the obliteration of Scottish symbolism. The present focus on political regeneration, it is plain, is closely and complexly connected with both cultural awareness and the business dimension, and fertile ground for contention. Concluding remarks The boundaries of political communication in Britain are undergoing profound - and largely unremarked - change. I have argued that there are two main causes that underlie this process. First, the European Union is redefining both British domestic politics and media agendas. And second, the devolution of powers to Scotland is producing a new national parliamentary centre. As a result of the latter, the fault-lines running through British statehood will become much more apparent as 'north of the Border' comes to signify wide-ranging democratic autonomy for the Scots. Even before it is in place, the very prospect of Scotland's parliament is promoting the creation of an increasingly distinctive political culture, one that defines itself as not-Westminster. It is an open question whether ultimately the new constitutional settlement will push the wider British polity in the direction of federalism, or instead lead to Scottish separation. Whatever the eventual outcome, we are already facing a change of historic significance that will unleash a new political dynamic and reshape national identities both in Scotland and in the UK as a whole. Within multi-national states such as the UK, it is plain that nationhood and statehood may pull in divergent directions, creating new fields of force. In the process of 'stateless nation-building' that is entering a decisive phase in Scotland today the reconfiguration of politics has been intimately related to media and communication. [26] For instance, consistent media coverage in Scotland certainly played a major role in preparing the ground for the Referendum. The strong support for devolution showed that there was an informed public, precisely because of the airing given to the lengthy debate (both pro and con) amongst the political classes, key interest groups, and the intelligentsia. [27] By contrast, the radical implications of devolution are not so well understood south of the Border, where media attention has been somewhat sporadic and rather superficial. There is at present a communication deficit which may have important consequences for relations between the parliaments at Westminster and at Holyrood and also for how the different parts of the UK react to major political change. Arguably, therefore, 'cross-border' communication via the news media will have an increasingly crucial role to play in the reporting and interpretation of devolution within the United Kingdom. Following the Referendum, there were indicative tensions in the political dealings between Edinburgh and Westminster. There was a serious squabble over the control of inward investment between the Scottish Office and the Department of Trade and Industry. A key debate also opened up over the 'Barnett formula' that determines per capita expenditure in the different parts of the UK: the present favouring of Scotland led to serious questioning of current arrangements by English MPs, and was a foretaste of the much more fundamental discussion to come concerning the country's financial settlement under devolution. These issues, and others, attracted levels of media attention in Scotland far greater than those in England, a disequilibrium in public communication that gives cause for concern. From a quite different angle, we might note how, following publication of Scotland's Parliament, and moves prior to the enactment of the Scotland Act in 1998, the imminent prospect of devolution rapidly led to an emergent debate about Scotland's future media regime. To date, this has touched on regulation, the concentration of ownership, regionalism, the organisation of political reporting, and broadcasting economics. However, so far as both broadcasting and the press are concerned, the parameters of policy change are located not at Westminster alone, but also increasingly in Brussels. Ultimately, therefore, the options available to Scotland's media will be influenced by a context in which global economic competition and technologically-driven change will be decisive counters, as will supranational processes of political and economic integration. The present drive towards technological 'convergence' in the fields of broadcasting, telephony and information technology will be determined by the outcome of the debate over the European Commission's November 1997 Green Paper on regulation. [28] The Brussels initiative has raised questions about whether current regulatory systems are blocking the growth of an information society. It has also brought to the fore concern about the place of cultural and social goals in a new European media order. Another policy issue, that of the concentration of media ownership, is also set to come back into the frame. This is the latest stage of the European Commission's long-running, and so far inconclusive, attempt to grapple with how to devise rules able to secure pluralism in a wide variety of European media markets. Both of these grand themes - 'convergence' and 'concentration and pluralism' - with their interweaving of media, communications, and cultural policies, have been on the political agenda for much of the 1990s and will continue to be so in the new millennium. The terms of the debate - national cultural defence v techno-economic determinism, information pluralism v media concentration - will be played out at three articulating levels: the EU, the UK, and the Scottish. Consequently, how Scotland's transforming politico-communicative space is elaborated will depend not only on London but also significantly on Brussels. Footnotes[1]Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationalism, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2nd edn., 1966; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso Editions, 1983; Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, London, SAGE Publications, 1995. [2]Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989; John Keane, The Media and Democracy, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991. [3]The present chapter has been researched with the support of the Economic and Social Research Council's 'Media Culture and Media Economics' Programme. Issues raised here have been fruitfully discussed with my colleagues Brian McNair, David Miller, William Dinan and Deirdre Kevin in the 'Political Communication and Democracy' research project team, but responsibility for this analysis is mine alone. The support of the Norwegian Research Council's ARENA Programme is also gratefully acknowledged. [4]Jürgen Habermas, 'Citizenship and National Identity', pp. 20-35 in Bart van Steenbergen (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship, London, SAGE Publications, 1994. [5]Philip Schlesinger, 'From Cultural Defence to Political Culture: Media, Politics and Collective Identity in the European Union', Media, Culture and Society, 1997, pp. 369-391. [6]At present, this doctrine officially concerns member states' relations to the Union. However, it is plainly open to inventive appropriation at the sub-state level, and will affect how the 'Europe of the Regions' shapes up. [7]Anthony Barnett, This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution, London, Vintage 1997. [8]Scotland's Parliament, Cm 3658, Edinburgh, The Stationery Office, 1997. [9]Kenyon Wright, The People Say Yes: The Making of Scotland's Parliament, Argyll Publishing, Glendaruel, 1997; James G. Kellas, 'The Constitutional Options for Scotland', Parliamentary Affairs, 1990, pp. 426-434. [10]Scotland Bill, House of Commons, Session 1997-98, Internet Publications, 18 December 1997. [11]David McCrone, 'Unmasking Britannia: the Rise and Fall of British National Identity', Nations and Nationalism, 1997, pp. 579-596. [12]Michael Keating, 'What's Wrong with Asymmetrical Government?', paper presented to the ECPR Standing Group on Regionalism, conference on 'Devolution', Newcastle-upon-Tyne, February 1997; David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation, London, Routledge, 1992; Lindsay Paterson, The Autonomy of Modern Scotland, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1994. [13]Peter Meech and Richard Kilborn, 'Media and Identity in a Stateless Nation: the Case of Scotland', Media, Culture and Society, 1993, pp. 245-259, quotations from p.258. [14]John McInnes, 'The Broadcast Media in Scotland', Scottish Affairs, 1993, pp. 84-98. [15]These figures, and those in the rest of this section, are based on the National Readership Survey's figures for Daily and Sunday Newspapers in Scotland for July 1996-June 1997. [16]The Guardian, 29 July 1996. [17]Figures and quotation from his speech to the Voice of the Listener and Viewer Conference on 'Broadcasting in Scotland Post Devolution', Stirling, 29 November 1997. [18]Maurice Smith, Paper Lions: The Scottish Press and National Identity, Edinburgh, Polygon, 1994. [19]Andrew Neil, Full Disclosure, London, Pan Books, 1997. Quotation from pp. xvii-xviii. [20]Broadcast, 29 September 1997. [21]John McCormick, 'The BBC and the Changing Broadcasting Environment', University of Strathclyde, Town and Gown Lecture, 4 November 1997. [22]The Scotsman, 3 January 1998. [23]Nigel Smith, 'Broadcasting and a Scottish Parliament', Scottish Affairs, 1997, pp. 29-41. [24]Quoted from his reply to questions at the CREST conference on 'Understanding Constitutional Change', Edinburgh, 21 November 1997. [25]The post-Referendum consensus was somewhat shaken when, in January 1998, Donald Dewar announced the choice of Holyrood as the site for the Scottish parliament. This was controversial because of the anti-nationalist political motivations attributed to the decision in some quarters. Both the Liberal Democrats and the SNP had favoured Calton Hill, home of the Royal High School, which was to have been the Assembly building in 1979, and had been the symbolic focus of political campaigning since then. [26]Michael Keating, 'Stateless Nation-building: Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland in the Changing State System', Nations and Nationalism, 1997, pp. 689-717. [27]Contrast the Scottish vote with that for the Welsh Referendum, where the 'Yes' vote prevailed by the narrowest of margins. Moreover, in January 1998, the accuracy of the Welsh count was being questioned. [28]European Commission, Green Paper on the Convergence of the Telecommunications, Media and Information Technology Sectors, and the Implications for Regulation: Towards an Information Society Approach, Com (97) 623, Brussels, 3 December 1997.
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