Five Million Ways to Be Scottish Referendum Documentaries

OK, so you're passionate about

your national identity?

Enough to have electromagnetic needles inject

indelible ink under your skin?!

I've got the Scottish flag tattooed on my skin.

It's inked on me.

I'm Stuart Cosgrove. And in the year of the referendum, I have been

watching the carnival of Scottish life more closely than ever before.

And meeting people with surprising perspectives

on what it means to be Scottish.

We regard it as an old Scottish tradition that we are reviving.

This is a story about the beating-heart

of cultural difference...

HE CHEERS

..and who we really are.

I think this is the world's best place to go surfing.

HE LAUGHS That's a lie.

It's a place where identity is neither simple nor fixed -

many people feel only Scottish, some feel British

and a substantial number look elsewhere for their identity.

I am very, very proud to be Scots but very intensely proud to be British.

And I don't see the distinction.

These weighty books contain

the hidden history of millions of Scots -

ordinary people whose lives defy simple classification.

I'm in New Register House, surrounded by the birth,

death and marriage certificates of Scotland.

This is the raw data of the nation.

But what does it mean to be Scottish?

All of us will answer that question differently -

some in cliches and some in compelling human stories.

Trust me, there are five million ways to be Scottish.

'You're tuned in to Off The Ball - the most petty and ill-informed

'sports programme on radio. Welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Cosgrove.

'He's Tam Cowan. And joining us soon will be our guests -

'Mark Wotte and Dundee Barry.

'I'm Stuart Cosgrove. I present a radio show.

'I am variously a soul music fan, a St Johnstone supporter, I'm married

'into a Tamil Hindu family and I've struggled with eczema all my life.

'To this day, cruel friends call me Lionel Itchy.

'Oh, and I am Scottish, whatever that means?'

I feel very secure about my identity in all its mongrel glory.

The referendum is exciting -

it offers us an opportunity to reflect on how Scotland's governed.

But worry not, this is neither a political film,

nor a campaign video.

In fact, it's a journey to meet many people across Scotland

with both settled and shifting attitudes to their identity

and how it might impact on the referendum.

BOYS: Freedom!

90-minute-patriots - that is a commonly held view of Scots,

aligning us uncomfortably with simple emotions

and a game of football.

# We'll be coming

# We'll be coming

# We'll be coming down the road... #

I think of the Tartan Army, I think of haggis.

# ..We'll be coming

# We'll be coming down the road.... #

The Scottish international team, the Edinburgh Tattoo.

# ..We'll be coming

# We'll be coming... #

CHEERING

So, a pudding and a song about coming down a road.

Surely identity is more complex than that?

Edinburgh. The capital.

The Athens of the North.

Home of miraculous myths and of a man who has lived with

the raw data of identity for the last 20 years.

David McCrone runs a centre which focuses on the study

of national identity.

He has spent a lifetime gathering evidence about how we see ourselves.

David, this thing called identity, is it important?

Well it is,

but it's quite difficult to pin it down.

The writer Willie McIlvanney once said that,

"National identity is a bit like having an insurance policy.

"You know you've got one, but you don't know where it is,

"and you certainly don't know what the small print means."

So it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous.

But, in a way, until it's problematic,

where there's a situation where people have to choose,

people just take it for granted.

In everyday life, we do take it for granted.

But decades of evidence shows that Scots - more than anyone

else in Britain - feel their national identity.

It is in the language of marketing speak - it's a core value.

Over the years, we discovered that Scottish identity -

being Scottish - among everyone, is a very important identity.

On a par, thank God, with being a parent,

and indeed being a partner or a spouse.

And certainly more important that peoples' gender,

or their class identity and so on. So it is ubiquitous in Scotland.

People in Scotland think of themselves

overwhelmingly as Scottish.

Some people would say that identity is kind of fixed, it's given,

you know - I am Scottish, therefore I am.

Is identity fixed?

No, because identity, above all, has to do with claims.

That is, people claim to be something.

That is - I am this, I am that.

Or they say - you are not,

or you are one of us, or not one of us.

And so on, and so on.

There's a whole complex of negotiation of identities

which people go through.

CROWD CHANTING

McDiarmid Park, Perth.

Once arable farmland and now home of St Johnstone FC.

I'm here to meet someone who is a living embodiment of how

complex those negotiations can be.

Bruce Fummey is a fellow Saints fan.

His dad was Ghanaian student, his mum is Scottish.

Ironically, his African father studied at an aerodrome

in Scone a few hundred yards from the spiritual

home of the Stone of Destiny - it's where Africa meets ancient Scotland.

Bruce we're talking really about identity, about what makes you

feel who you are. How would you describe yourself?

A fat bloke, I would say

is probably the predominant sense that

I get as I walk about the streets. But no,

you're talking about in terms of your national background,

your national identity and stuff.

A Scottish African - would that fit into your genre?

Yeah, of course it would. And as a Scottish African,

how important therefore is being Scottish to you?

SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH

It depends if I'm at the rugby or no'.

It's part of your everyday existence. How important is your arm to you?

Sometimes it's more important than others, sometimes it really

disnae matter because you're no' using it.

But it's part of me, it's part of who I am.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Bruce Fummey.

I'm a 5'8" male of mixed racial origin.

Medium build.

LAUGHTER

Piss off!

Bruce defies the norm.

He is a regular on the stand-up comedy circuit

and an aficionado of the national poet Rabbie Burns.

He can recite poems that most of us only half-know a line from.

I think growing up you kind of almost had to be more

Scottish than the other Scottish kids, you know what I mean?

Now here's one really difficult thing. I hear on the grapevine

that you're also learning, studying and evolving your Gaelic language.

Now, for most Scots that's something that's quite challenging,

even for people that have grown up in the Gaeltacht or whatever.

It's a big challenge.

It's no' easy. French or German or Spanish would be easier.

I've become quite obsessed with it, do you know what I mean?

What led to it? What attracted you to an indigenous language?

It was accidental. We were going to the islands,

and I went into the Bridge of Allan library.

I said, "Look, I'm going to the islands, have you any advice?"

And she pointed me towards this room. And I thought I'd go in

and find books about the Hebrides, but actually I found a Gaelic class.

Now in a situation like that, a confident person says,

"Sorry, I've made a mistake," turns and walks out.

An insecure person becomes part of Stirling Council's

adult education scheme.

Now the old cynic would say that you're just doing it to get on the

telly because BBC Alba is always looking for

Scots-Ghanaian comedians.

-Al-pah.

-Al-pah? OK.

THEY LAUGH

Folk do say that. They say, "Why are you learning Gaelic?

"Are you learning Gaelic so that when you go up to Inverness

"to do your comedy people understand you?"

And I say, "No, that's why I'm learning Polish."

THEY LAUGH

"Are you learning Gaelic to get on the telly?"

There's easier ways of getting on the telly.

As you know, there's easier ways of getting on the telly.

If you've got an embarrassing body, you get on the telly.

If you're from a family of big fat folk, you get on the telly.

If your kids won't behave, if you've got a manky house,

you get on the telly. I've got no need to learn Gaelic,

I've got 101 ways to get on the telly.

So, a fat bloke with a manky hoose.

Bruce's self-mocking way of asserting his identity

is a breath of fresh air. It's clearly very important to him.

And, by the way, he's inclined to vote yes in September.

Identity matters, and for some people it runs more than skin deep.

On the walls of this tattoo parlour in Hamilton

are the diverse slogans, emblems and symbols of identity.

Lanarkshire has its own sub-cultures of belonging,

which often find their expression in politics and religion.

On the Catholic side of things, you've got Jesus,

the Virgin Mary, crosses,

crosses with Jesus - all that sort of thing.

And you've got more radical things like IRA tattoos

and that sort of thing.

On the Protestant side of things, you've got Union Jacks,

British tattoos like bulldogs, lions, that sort of thing.

And then more radical, you've got UVF and UDA.

Although I am more interested in how Scotland will be governed

after the referendum, tattoo parlours tell us that the

event itself is igniting passions and tribal loyalties.

Getting a tattoo just to symbolise

my feeling on my Britishness.

Obviously, just to reaffirm

my position on the referendum.

Most of my tattoos are all something very close to me.

The majority of them are obviously

cultural aspects of my life.

And it always has been - any tattoo

I've got always has been more

cultural and personal

than anything else.

So this is the body-politics of the yes/no debate

and in the time-honoured BBC tradition,

here's Toni to provide balance.

I'm getting a Saltire with "freedom" wi' thistles.

And what does that tattoo say to you?

-Tell me some of the things that...

-I'm Scottish.

Now tell me, you've got one very special tattoo, tell me about that.

100% Scottish Beef. It's on my bum.

I would show you but I don't think you want to see it.

A desire to adorn ourselves with image and identity is what keeps

this business alive. And the final results are never easy to erase.

I like the fact that obviously it emphasises on the flag itself,

which is what I was originally going for, obviously.

I'm definitely happy with that.

It's probably the biggest one I've got, I'd say.

HE LAUGHS

I feel more Scottish now I've got the Scottish flag

-tattooed on my skin. It's inked on me.

-For ever.

Until I die.

Tattoos divide opinion just as much as politics

but they also act as a form of cartoon-identity -

values inked into absolutes.

The forthcoming referendum engages viewpoints that are certain

and absolute, but many more that are unsure,

and whose views are open to change.

To help me grasp this capacity to change,

I met Scotland's biggest psephological brain

to try and work out what identity means

in cold, hard, political reality.

If it wasn't the case

that Scotland was indeed a distinct nation

within the United Kingdom, and that therefore as a result some

people could say to themselves,

well, look, I am Scottish, why can't my country be an independent state

like any other nation?

I don't think we'd be having this referendum in the first place.

And, certainly, it's clearly true that the more Scottish that

people feel and the less British that they feel, the more likely

they say they're going to vote yes in this referendum.

At the backdrop of all of this,

identity is providing a crucial structure that is shaping the

opportunities that are open to the yes and no sides in the first place.

In other elections, John, there's been a tendency for analysts

to look to particular sub-groups of the society.

In the USA elections it was the soccer mom.

We've had in British elections, you know, Basildon man or

white-van-man, whatever.

Is it possible to identify within the Scottish electorate,

sub-groups of people who may be disproportionately important?

Well, I'm not sure if we can identify groups that are

disproportionately important, though I think we can identify stereotypes.

I mean, I think, on the yes side at least, almost undoubtedly

the stereotype is going to be of what we might call caber man.

Now, in other words, somebody who is relatively young, who is male

and who has a very strong sense of Scottish identity,

as for example,

through participation in tossing the caber in a Highland Games.

That sounds about 25 people.

Well, I mean, therein maybe in fact reveals the fact

that, of course, at the end of the day we are looking at a society,

many of whom are people with a sense of dual identity,

which is why, arguably,

this referendum is not looking that easy for the yes side to win.

Because even somebody with a strong sense of Scottish identity, many of

those people will also acknowledge a strong sense of Britishness.

Oh, come on, John! I have lived in Scotland most of my life

but I have never met or even seen a caber man.

It sounds like a term thrown into the debate by psephologists

to sell their wares or to baffle us into submission.

But John has a point - feeling Scottish doesn't stop you

feeling other things as well.

I am certain that over the last 20 years

we have witnessed a rise of self-awareness and self-confidence

that may be a strong underlying theme in the year of the referendum.

To illustrate this, I want to take you on a detour to the

Malt Whisky Society to meet food-writer Sue Lawrence.

Excuse the mild pretentiousness but this conversation

is about your granny and the semiotics of clootie dumpling.

The clootie dumpling is something

that is very much from my family

and you are quite near, you're Perth, I'm Dundee.

It was very much that sort of area.

Well I remember my granny cooking clootie dumpling,

in fact she'd use the word cloot daily.

She'd say, "I'll dicht your kisser with this cloot," or whatever.

And she'd wipe my face and use the cloth and then the cloth,

not the same cloth, a cloth, was then used to cook the dumpling.

When you start to look at it, maybe this is just my own family

experience, but I kind of felt that traditional Scottish food

began to die away maybe some time in the '60s or whatever.

Or maybe became something that we were slightly embarrassed about.

We were definitely ashamed of it all and I think, you know, post-war

people were out of rationing, say our parents.

And they were thinking, "Why do we want mince and tatties?

"We can make spaghetti carbonara, spaghetti Bolognese, lasagne."

People were also travelling more. But we were definitely, I think, unsure

of who we were and we wanted to maybe be something a little bit different.

And there's some sense of looking back at our own history,

with that feeling of maybe kind of cringe or disdain or something

where you're uncomfortable with even saying things like clootie dumpling.

Exactly. Or Hogmanay, First Footing. First Footing, everyone did it.

Then suddenly it wasn't quite the thing,

and people would have dinner parties instead.

Traditional foods like Stornoway black pudding, Arbroath smokies,

porridge oats were largely confined to the past, but have suddenly

resurfaced in a new self-confident Scotland, where the organic,

fresh-food movement has found value in authenticity and localness.

Almost all of these foodstuffs, in one way or another,

could find themselves on the menu of the poshest restaurants in Scotland

and Michelin-star and whatever.

You'd comfortably go in and see a starter that would be

-Stornoway black pudding with...

-Scallops.

-Scallops or whatever.

Haggis with a pomegranate jus

-or something like that, I don't know.

-Interesting.

But all of these things could quite easily feature

in a Scottish restaurant and that.

So is it that they have simply become part of the world of food

or is there a move, do you think, to reclaim the past?

I think a bit of both.

You said that these would be in any Scottish restaurant.

But the good black puddings are in a lot of London restaurants now,

you know, with their branding. Because everyone's proud of that.

So I think it's the pride and I think it's also, yes,

it's part of the worldwide cuisine now.

Our relationship with food is both everyday and profound -

it can help define a culture

and tells us a simple but hugely important lesson.

Scotland is abandoning the cultural cringe.

We are no longer embarrassed about who we are,

or in awe of the apparent sophistication of others.

To measure how powerfully Scotland's re-emergent identity has grown,

look a few miles south.

Is there the same confidence about national identity in Gateshead?

# All you fascists

# You may be surprised

# The people in this world are getting organised

# You're bound to lose

# All you fascists are bound to lose... #

Singer, songwriter and socialist Billy Bragg

is preparing for a concert here

and is worried that Scotland is leaving the English behind.

We English tend to have a collective blind spot over our

national identity and that blind spot is obscured by the Union Jack.

The fact that we still sing God Save the Queen,

the British national anthem, at sporting events,

rather than an equivalent of Flower of Scotland -

that to me was the moment that I realised that something was

changing in Scotland, when the Scots decided to no longer sing

God Save the Queen but sing their own song.

If the English ever get round to choosing a song that at least

mentions the name of our bloody country -

which I think is the very least you would expect from a national anthem -

that would be the first sign that we are starting to take the

first steps on the long journey that Scotland is close to completing.

GUITAR PLAYS

# Take down the Union Jack

# It clashes with the sunset

# And put it in the attic with the emperor's old clothes

# When did it fall apart?

# Sometime in the '80s

# When the great and the good gave way

# To the greedy and the mean... #

Billy has touched a raw nerve, guaranteed to infuriate even the

most placid Scot - is there a difference between the words

English and British?

# Take down the Union Jack

# It clashes with the sunset

# And ask our Scottish neighbours

# If independence looks any good

# Cos they just might understand

# How to take an abstract notion of personal identity

# And turn it into nationhood... #

Whilst Billy Bragg is ready to call himself English,

do his audience have a clear idea of what that actually means?

I suppose I think of tea, cups of tea?

SHE LAUGHS

They drink tea in Scotland.

They do, that's why I said British, not just English.

I can't think of anything specific about being English,

apart from the George Cross is the flag of England.

Um...

What a hard question.

I suppose it's just part of

several sort of geographical identities you have.

I sort of see them as Russian dolls.

I'm a Northerner, that fits inside being from England,

which fits inside being British, which fits inside being European,

which fits inside being a citizen of the world, really.

Do you think that for English people it's a bit harder

to distinguish between being English and British

than it is for other people of the UK?

Yes, definitely, yeah.

I don't think it means that we have any less of an identity,

I just think that there are less things out there that

symbolise that we are stereotypically English.

So stereotypically Scottish, you think tartan.

Stereotypically Irish, you think green. That kind of thing.

Whereas with English, I don't think we have anything that

defines us into that category, into that group.

The strongest possibility of there being a new English settlement

comes if there is an independent Scotland.

Because then we will be forced to think again about who we are.

In some ways, you'll take that Union Jack awning off the front of what

it means to be English and force us to think a bit more about it.

But we're never going to get our heads out of the attic of Britishness

unless something changes.

So that possibility presents itself next year.

HE LAUGHS

If, unlike the English, Scots seem to be negotiating a modern,

post-imperial identity, it would be naive to think that

history and the glorious past no longer matter.

Sad as it may seem, I recently reread an old

copy of the Journal Of Scottish Affairs from 1994.

And I came across a perspective on the past that may provide

a key to unlocking the mysteries of today.

It's a methodology which breaks our sense of identity down into a

series of concentric rings -

family, nationality, tribe and so on.

The original author of the concentric circles of identity

lives here in Fife.

TC Smout is retired but he was the Historiographer Royal

and remains an avid ornithologist.

Like me, he thinks identity is complex and layered.

These are like

circles that are...

that spread out from the family, to the tribe.

And the kin is very important in Scotland,

which is kind of between the family and the tribe.

And the region, and then the nation, the nationality of being Scottish,

and then something possibly even bigger, like being European.

I mean, it's... You wake up in morning and you say, "Who am I?"

The answer to that is, quite a lot of things.

According to Professor Smout's theories, these concentric

circles have a distinct Scottish aspect.

Being Scottish, historically, is not a fixed tribal or ethnic

identity, nor is it based on a language or a creed.

It's more than just living here, it's putting down roots.

It's the feeling of belonging which makes you Scottish.

But it's not who your mother and father were.

It's about belonging. What a great word.

Historically, Scottishness has always been inclusive - Gaels,

Lowlanders, even die-hard Fifers all called themselves Scots

quite happily.

Recently, using the records kept here at New Register House

in Edinburgh,

I traced my own family back - as many Scots can - to Ireland.

The huge wave of post-famine immigration in the 19th century

brought my ancestors from Galway to the jute mills of Perth.

They quickly assimilated as Scots.

But the latest census shows that this process of inward

migration continues today.

In the last decade, the ethnic minority population of Scotland

has doubled to 4%.

Tim, I'm just taken aback by the volumes of information

and history and research that's available here.

Just in a very simple sense,

what do all these volumes tell us about Scotland?

What it tells us is that, over the last few decades,

we have become a much bigger population.

We've grown by about half-a-million over the last 100 years.

We've become an older population. And over the more recent past,

we have become a more diverse population.

One key to unlocking the kind of mysteries of identity is language.

What does the census tells us, if anything, about

the changing nature of the languages that Scots speak?

One of the things it tells us is that there's a lot more of them than there used to be.

There's over 170 languages recorded in the last census,

that are spoken by ten or more people.

That's a large range of diversity.

Some of them will be languages that will have been here

for many, many years. Decades even. And others will be much more recent.

Some of them will be only spoken by ten people or so,

and others will be spoken by hundreds of thousands.

So final question, Tim. When you look at the census now,

is there anything that personally fascinated you as an individual

rather than necessarily as someone that's the bearer of the keys

of this wonderful place?

I suppose, for me, I think the increase in diversity is

a fascinating thing and it does get to this question of

who we are and where we come from.

My roots are English but I've been in Scotland now for many years and

I think that being able to understand that people move around

and that they find different ways to express their identity

and to live out their lives.

Most people don't do the census with a view to history.

They do it because they have to do it

and because they see some merit in the data that comes from it.

But when you fill it in, what comes out of it is

that broad sweep of the nation as a whole

that you see coming through it. That's the fascinating thing for me.

It really is fascinating.

That sweep of history has changed what it means to be Scottish -

here's the proof that diversity is increasingly our future.

But does that mean that more people will feel

trapped between different identities?

How do I define myself?

OK, well, OK, I am Scottish.

But I was born in London, so arguably I'm English,

but then I'd say British.

But my dad was brought up in India and my mum was brought up in Kenya -

so, I go alphabetical.

So, that makes me Asian first, then British, then Scottish,

and somewhere in amongst that is myopic.

STUART LAUGHS

I'm incredibly short-sighted, both figuratively and literally.

Yeah, there are some people that kind of feel ill-at-ease with

the way that identity, it almost is in flux in your life,

and at different moments in your life, different elements of who you

think you are, or who you believe you are, come to the surface.

Have you ever found that your Scottishness

or your Britishness is in tension?

Oh, absolutely. Sometimes... You pull focus when you need to.

It's not like you change when you need to,

but just certain things come to the fore.

And if you are sort of a mixed bag, like I am,

there's just more elements that can sort of come to the fore.

When I was younger, maybe eight or nine years old...

GRANGE HILL THEME

..I grew up in Glasgow, grew up in Bishopbriggs, north of Glasgow.

If I ever had cause to go into town, I'd be very surprised

if I wasn't called a Paki, or occasionally a Sambo,

which annoyed me, because I thought,

"If you're going to be racially insensitive, get it right."

But equally, if I then went to the wedding of a cousin in London,

I'd get called Jock, and I'd suddenly become quite proudly Scottish.

And they couldn't cope with the fact that I had a Scottish accent,

as diluted as mine is, coming out of this brown face.

So they found it quite hard to cope with my Scottishness.

So I kind of felt like I was fighting it on all corners.

When you're eight or nine, you feel like that's a negative thing,

but as you get older, you realise that you can use it in a positive way.

To make sense today of the concentric circles of identity,

you would have to include another defining factor - youth culture.

Those that take their identity not from nationhood

but from their social life, their music or their sense of fashion.

Some are even willing to brave the fiercest weather

and challenges to assert their culture - Scotland's surfers.

It's kind of grim, but it's kind of like,

you don't feel it, in a sense, because you're insulated

in these 21st-century spacesuits that we wear, or wet suits.

I mean, it's not great surf conditions.

It's stormy, it's windy, it's overcast, it was raining earlier,

but it doesn't really matter.

You're still out there, paddling around, catching the occasional wave

and just being part of it all. It's hard to explain.

It seems nuts, but it doesn't feel like it.

He's right, identity is nuts.

Since the rise of the teenager in the 1950s, the notion of youth

subculture has complicated still further an already complex picture.

A passion for something you do or love can often define someone

more crucially than nationality, family or gender.

You know, surfing in Scotland is a good time.

But it's not for most Scottish people.

The attraction is the natural environment.

It's the fact that it is quite quiet.

In certain parts, on certain days, the waves can be as good anywhere.

I think this is the world's best place to go surfing.

HE LAUGHS

That's a lie.

Surfing and the concrete magic of skate-boarding

means so much to Jamie, he's built a business around it.

And ironically, it has allowed him

to discover a country he already lived in and thought he knew.

Is Scotland undiscovered in that sense?

In terms of its surf culture or whatever?

I don't want to say too much.

STUART LAUGHS

Scotland is rugged, it's inaccessible, and it's remote.

That's part of the beauty of it.

That's what's good from a surfer's point of view.

That can be often what you're looking for.

Yeah, has surfing made you discover Scotland maybe in ways that

you didn't know it as a child growing up?

Big time. Surfing, it can take you to literally discover the world.

But in the Scottish perspective,

it has taken me to all of the remotest points.

I would never have gone to the Outer Hebrides.

I'd probably would never have gone to Thurso, to be honest with you,

if it wasn't for the fact that I heard there were good waves up there.

Same as the west coast, parts of the east coast, wherever.

Jamie's business depends on putting together two salient parts

of his identity - he is a surfer and a Scot - and the meeting

of those two has created something bigger than both.

I'm thinking here of some of the kind of gear that you sell.

And just looking, you know, just looking at this hoodie...

The shop's Clan. And it's got Glasgow on it

and it's got the Celtic iconography on it and things like that.

Is, for you, the importance of Scotland as a place

quite important in terms of how you do business?

For sure. It's pretty blatant.

It stemmed from a conversation with one of my best friends

about setting up a skateboard shop -

what would it mean and what does it mean?

It really was just a group of core skateboarders, 20, 30 years ago.

I wanted to represent that and also the country.

We had a sort of different scene.

And Clan seemed like it was the obvious choice.

More as in family, group, I wasn't saying just Scottish.

I was just saying anybody that skates, you're all part of the clan.

With the referendum coming up, you know,

all of the political parties are always keen to see how

demographically people might vote. Age, gender, all the rest of it.

What's your instinct in Scotland?

Surfers, are they likely to vote yes or no?

THEY LAUGH

It depends. It's a varied group.

I think a lot of them will be sort of into the idea.

A bit unsure about what impact it's going to make.

A very small impact that did happen was that the ferry prices dropped,

so to go to the Outer Hebrides or whatever

became cheaper for surfers. So there's a direct correlation.

-There's a positive one.

-That's maybe how they'll look at it.

So identity - brought into sharp focus - can be based on what

we love, it can be about our passions rather than our nation.

And maybe it's not a rigid structure of rings or circles

but as Sanjeev Kohli suggested, a lens through which

we see the world, one that allows us to pull focus.

Take me, I'm a big fan of Northern Soul music.

It's ghetto-music from the 1960s in America and the civil rights period.

It came to Britain largely through working-class English DJs

and then was appropriated and assimilated by Scots.

Much like identity itself,

it's something that's borrowed, re-worked and reassessed.

And pursuing passions can often disrupt normal logic.

TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC

A St Andrew's night Ceilidh near Banchory -

what could be more Scottish?

MUSIC STOPS

APPLAUSE

But yet again, things are not quite what they seem.

BAND PLAYS

Oh, we saw a team come up from England and dance in Aberdeen.

And we thought, "Gosh that looks like great fun!"

So we thought we would give it a try.

Once you get hooked on morris dancing

you tend to be a morris man for ever, more or less.

You sort of die in post, you know?

It's a bit addictive, though quite why

I don't think any of us really know.

It's quite an interesting phenomenon.

AUDIENCE APPLAUD

When we first started, there were people who

sort of, you know, that...expletive undeleted,

"It's this lot." You know?

But, I mean, nowadays, half the time

if you were going down the road with your bells and whatnot on,

they'd be asking you, "Where are you dancing?" if you see what I mean?

So from that point of view, it's become a bit more familiar.

TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC

Most people think of morris dancing as quintessentially English - but

in the confused story of identity, it actually has deep Scottish roots.

Morris dancing is first recorded in the UK,

in Scotland in 1472, I think, or thereabouts.

Maybe plus or minus a year or two.

It started off as courtly entertainment

in the court of the king, gradually went down the social ladder

until it became a country village sort of thing.

And so we regard it as an old Scottish tradition

that we are reviving. It's not usually perceived that way

because most people think that it's English, but it's not at all.

BAGPIPES PLAY

So, Scottish morris dancing revived.

It's a local hybrid that resists any attempts to classify or confine

cultural identity. It is simply what these men

have made for themselves.

THEY SHOUT

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We have quite a strong identity.

We've been dancing with each other for nearly 40 years.

-Almost for ever.

-Almost for ever.

THEY LAUGH

Yes. And we have quite a strong identity as well.

We have our own dances, with our own characteristic steps and movements.

And we feel a very strong local tradition.

And even if we do use other people's dances,

we're still adapting them for our... to what we feel is comfortable.

So there's definitely a localness about it.

We've built a local tradition here over 40 years.

I don't know whether that's any help.

THEY LAUGH

The referendum is already emotionally charged

and no community will go unnoticed in the search for votes.

I am keeping my eye on Scotland's fragmented identities

to see if they have any influence at all on the referendum.

My favourite so far is Scottish Drag Queens for Independence.

"Be true to yourself in life, politics and love."

They may not hold the balance of power

but the beehives are brilliant.

Sometimes identity can curdle into tribalism.

My old friend, the film director Annie Griffin, is an American

who moved to London and on to Glasgow and now Edinburgh.

She thinks that I have a very Scottish habit - dwelling

on differences and grievances, and worse still, not listening enough.

The picking away at differences

doesn't seem so important to me,

and certainly when one thinks about the referendum in 2014,

whether I'm a Scot or whether I'm an American living in Scotland,

it's about who is in charge and what access we have to power.

Not, do I feel more Scottish than Sean Connery or Ewan McGregor

or people who live outside of Scotland

and yet are identifiably Scottish by their voices?

The honest answer is, I don't think a lot about what am I, who am I?

Do you feel more shaped by the politics of gender

than the politics of nationhood?

Do you think - throw a question back at you -

do you think that identity politics is on the way out?

The focus of who am I and what's my tribe?

Who am I and how do I identify myself

is less an important question than how do we work together.

I thought about it at the time of Obama's election.

I thought I had internalised a sense that it must be

very, very difficult to grow up with a parent from one country

and one race, and a parent from another one.

And thinking about Obama, it made me think that's probably

a much more stimulating way to grow up.

And the more you think about it, especially with

the movement of Europeans into the UK in the last ten years,

the sense that there are so many people who are living in different

countries than their families, that there is more of a sense of,

yeah, we're all mixed up - but what are we going to do about it?

Clearly the referendum polarises at one level because it asks

a very simple question - yes or no - and clearly there are people with

fixed views on that and people whose views are much more fluid.

Are you sensing that it's pulling people apart in the same way or not?

In Scotland? I think what it has brought out is the Scots' tendency

to not be good at having conversations and to attack.

I keep hearing from people who've put themselves above the parapet

and started to have discussions about this on Twitter,

in the media, and there is such a lot of aggressive,

anonymous trolling and attacking of people.

And people have had death threats just for raising it on

comedy programmes in the UK, raising the issue.

That seems to be the worst thing about the referendum at the moment,

people's fear of speaking out,

that there have been such a lot of aggression around it.

Let's be cooler and let's learn to have conversations

where we disagree about things.

I can see Annie's point about how tribalism can cause conflict,

but surely there's a place for identity in art?

MUSIC: "New Paths to Helicon Pt 1" by Mogwai

Glasgow-based group Mogwai - Scotland's self-styled Guitar Army -

are one of the most consistently creative bands

Scotland has ever produced.

Is Scottishness, whatever that is,

more important as a defining thing than subcultural stuff

like the history of rock music or the history of music itself?

I think it comes up in little ways.

I think that sometimes only when you leave Scotland do you realise how

Scottish you are, or you realise how defining certain traits are.

I think that there is something about Scottishness that is very...

I think humble is maybe too strong a word, but it is very...

Yeah, it's certainly not, we're certainly not the kind of folk

to shout from the rooftops.

I think that when people kind of either intellectually analyse

your music or make grand claims for it, there's a slight kind

of embarrassment within the Scottish culture that says,

"Oh, I don't want to be seen to be showboating

"or kind of baw-bagging or whatever."

Sheena Easton, Eastoning.

-They should maybe bring this word into the dictionary.

-Exactly, yeah.

Mogwai operate on an international stage and recently contributed

to the soundtrack of the eerie French drama The Returned.

Are you increasingly, in your mind,

a global citizen more than a Scottish citizen?

Well, I'm not even a Scottish citizen at the moment.

THEY LAUGH

I think it's important for culture to spread out as far as possible

and connect with people as far as possible.

Yeah, we've always had a great connection with France.

I think it was one of the first places

where people took us seriously.

I think, for a long time, when we started we were young,

but people took our youth as a sign of daftness

and thought we were just wee daft boys, which we were.

But we were wee daft boys making quite serious music.

And it was people in France that were the first to take it

quite seriously, I think.

Of course, Britishness has its own wee way of coming through too -

and that means ties to art and culture

that will play a part in the referendum as well.

Culturally, my two big loves are music and comedy.

And I've always seen there being a wonderfully wealthy tradition

of both of those things, in a British sense.

In a Scottish sense, as well.

But when I think of all of the things that I like, when

I think of the comedy that I adore, it's Monty Python,

it's coming up through Graham Linehan and the IT Crowd

and stuff like that.

It's like Father Ted, which is Irish, which is slightly different,

through to Chris Morris' stuff, Kenny Everett, The Two Ronnies.

And then I think of the way that the comedy...

Britain thankfully doesn't have an empire any more

but it does kind of have an empire in terms of punching above its weight

in exporting comedians and music to America.

And that makes me immensely proud to be British.

And I don't want to be divorced from that.

Although the referendum is not about voting for the end of comedy,

many Scots feel strong connections to Britishness

through things like that, more than, say, through monarchy.

There may even be a few out there that find Penelope Keith funny

and so cherish things the way they are.

In an opulent corner of Belgravia, that is for ever Scotland,

I met up with Scottish emigre Hugo Rifkind.

When you come across the debates about the independence referendum

in Scotland, what are your immediate emotional feelings

about it, rather than rational political feelings?

What emotionally do you feel?

In a strange way, I feel two things at once.

Partly I feel a bit like I have no place commenting.

Because if I wanted to have...

I ought to feel as if I wanted to have a say in

Scotland's future, I should have stayed in Scotland.

And the fact that I didn't, I feel that I've slightly sacrificed that.

So I find it hard to get too angry about the fact that

I don't have a vote, for example.

But at the same time, there's a sort of fear and resentment.

I feel like it threatens to take something away from me,

it threatens to make me a foreigner where I now live.

I consider my experience living in London, having made a home

in London, I don't feel like a kind of arriviste Irishman or Australian.

This is mine, this is my country.

I've merely moved to a different bit of my country.

And I slightly resent the notion of being told that that's in fact

not what's happened by somebody else.

And that goes further than ideas of citizenship or passports

because under the white paper,

the Scottish Government's white paper, you would hold Scottish

citizenship through a number of different definitions of that.

I would hold Scottish citizenship, absolutely, but I would

become a different nationality from my daughters, for example.

Or at least, not quite a different nationality, but I would...

I don't know quite how else to say it but this is mine,

I come to London and it's mine. It's the capital of my country.

It's the county that my ancestors moved to.

And to be told that my ancestors didn't move to that country but

they moved to a different country and it's me, I'm the immigrant.

It's not really how my identity works.

I confess that my own identity has a homing instinct.

This is where I grew up.

It's a millions miles from Belgravia

and the sense of Britishness that Hugo Rifkind feels is under threat.

To me, this is home.

This is the back streets of Letham in Perth where I grew up.

A typical working-class housing scheme.

And over the years, it was a place that people aspired to live in.

My mother and father came here.

He was an Irish Scot, she was English. They met during the war.

The war for them was clearly something that mattered.

It brought them together with a purpose -

the idea of Britishness.

But as I grew up and got older, I began to realise that Britishness

didn't matter quite so much to me and my generation.

In lots of ways, Britishness seemed as if it was in decline.

TRUMPET PLAYS

This film captures the flickering images

of the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow in 1938.

It talks of the Scots as North Britons,

bound by an umbilical chord to industry, empire and war.

BAGPIPES AND EXPLOSIONS

Today they are the same race of whom, nearly 500 years ago,

the historian Holinshed spoke:

"Thereunto, we find them to be courageous and hardy,

"offering themselves often unto the uttermost perils

"with great assurance, so that a man may pronounce nothing to be over-hard

"or past their power to perform."

Although it's dead and gone for me,

this feeling of Britishness is not a thing of the past for others.

70, 70, 80, 80...

Here at Stirling Mart, the cattle could be sold as

Best of British or Scotch Beef.

And many of their owners admit to a dual identity that's a bit of both.

I would say Scottish and British.

Is it Scottish first and then British?

Well, yeah, I live in Scotland, so I am a Scot.

But I am British.

Being British is...

The only reason I'm British is because my passport says I'm British.

I am quite pleased to be part of the Union, while at the same time,

I love my county. I very much see myself as Scottish.

But I do indeed see myself as British as well.

So Britishness is real and palpable for some

and my rush to confine it to the past is not universally shared.

Some are deeply committed to keeping Britishness in their everyday lives.

Whether Scotland goes independent or not,

I would like to retain a cultural sense of Britishness.

Not in the old-fashioned style of the empire,

and the British bulldog and the St George's flag.

I mean...

Like I mentioned... I'll give you a good example of this.

I feel very much at home in Manchester and Liverpool

and, actually, Birmingham. These are towns I feel at home in.

I find, especially in Manchester,

it's almost like another Glasgow to me. Feels very similar.

I don't have the same feeling when I go to London.

And I know that when a lot of Scottish people say

they hate the English, they don't. They don't hate the English.

They hate the Southeast, they don't hate the English.

And interestingly, London is kind of hiving away as its own entity anyway.

So I would not like to lose links with towns like Manchester

and Liverpool cos I feel quite strongly...

There's an argument that you could rebuild Hadrian's Wall

maybe round about...I don't know...

Leamington Spa - somewhere round about there.

I don't want Coventry, I'm not bothered.

SIREN WAILS

This is about the loose ends,

ties that bind the disparate threads together.

800,000 people born in Scotland live in the rest of the UK

and are border-hoppers.

Vast numbers of my friends have worked for a time in England,

some have settled in England and gone back.

My peer group is border-hopping.

It feels a bit like an independent Scotland would

deny me that identity, would tell me I had to make a choice

about what I was.

About whether I was a Scot in England or whether I ought to, I don't know,

pass the Tebbit test and become an Englishman in England.

Which is not something I have any desire to do. Yeah.

One place where the history of Scotland and Britain remain

inextricably linked is less than a mile away

from where I live in Glasgow.

The headquarters of the Orange Order in Scotland

is not a place I frequent that often.

But that may say more about my contemporary prejudices

than the Orange Order's settled values.

If I'm so quick to advocate cultural diversity,

the splendour of difference,

does it extend a hand to an unambiguously British culture?

If you're looking to find people who are comfortable

in their skin about being

both British and Scottish, you've found us.

Because the Orange Order, I guess, would be something

that you would think about.

And I think it's one of the strengths of the Union that

the individuality of the four countries that comprise it

has always been encouraged, and has always been there.

We've always been proud to be Scots or Welsh or Northern Irish

-or English and yet, also, proud to be British.

-Yeah.

I've got several of these tartan ties.

I've got two kilts with all the trimmings.

I can quote from some Burns. I bristle, like every other Scot,

at every English insult, real or imagined.

So that makes me thoroughly Scots,

probably more Scots than Sean Connery, shall I say?

But it doesn't make me any less British.

I am very, very proud to be Scots but very intensely proud to be British.

And I don't see the distinction.

Ian Wilson is not alone in having this dual and co-existing identity.

Evidence suggests that co-existing feelings

and dual-identities of both Scottishness and Britishness

provide an important battle ground in the referendum.

Because, in a sense, virtually everyone in Scotland

feels strongly Scottish.

But Scotland clearly, at the moment, is a nation

which is divided about the merits of independence,

it follows that there must be a lot of people with a strong sense

of Scottish identity who are, at the moment, not following that up.

They are saying to themselves, "Look, it isn't just about whether or not

"I feel Scottish and I want my country to become an independent state,

"it's also about that I also feel British.

"I feel some affinity with the rest of the UK

"and do I want to let that go?"

And I think probably that the yes side,

to be able to win this referendum,

actually one of their key tasks is to persuade people who have at least

a modest sense of British identity, you can afford to let it go.

TRADITIONAL DANCE MUSIC

I started by saying there are over five million ways of being a Scot,

but one recurring pattern in the diverse quilt of identity

is that sense of Britishness that still exerts influence.

So here's the paradox - I set off on a journey to discover

the many different versions of Scottishness.

And on the way, discovered the concentric circles of identity

and thread of Britishness that runs through it.

It has faded for some, disappeared for others,

but for other people it's very much alive.

And that may well shape the outcome of the referendum.

One thing is absolutely certain,

Scotland's population is rising for the first time in centuries.

And that may take us on a very big journey indeed

to six million different versions of being Scottish.

BAGPIPES PLAY