Charles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scottish journalist and writer.
When Tony Benn became a minister in the 1960s -- and I think this must be apocryphal -- he had a huge map of Britain hung upside down in his office, so the channel was at the top and Scotland was at the bottom and, apparently, he said, "This is how we need to look at this country, with the money and the power draining by force of gravity out of the south east. " That was a great idea. I rather liked him for that. I don't know if it's actually true or not.
The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.
All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.
On the Black Sea, my father saw it begin. And on the Black Sea, seventy years on, I saw the beginning of its end.
But the people did get it. They had lost something -- not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable to go on accepting these systems, these portly little idiots in their blue suits, for another year, and then for another day, another hour. That special sort of impatience is the power-surge of revolution.
There are many kinds of revelation. But the most powerful is the vision which transcends the mental boundary between life and non-life, and Scotland is a place where this sort of revelation often approaches. Staring into a Scottish landscape, I have often asked myself why--in spite of all appearances--bracken, rocks, man and sea are at some level one.
I think England has been in the long-term damaged by Britishness.
English stupidity is an organism so primitive that it is apparently impossible to kill off. It reminds me of Physarum Polycephalum, the gigantic slime mould recently bred by scientists at Bonn. Bright yellow and about two millimetres thick, this monocellular creature--neither plant nor animal--grew to a size of 10 square yards before the scientists took fright and froze it. It can smell its favourite food, and move towards it at a speed of up to two centimetres an hour. This favourite food is porridge.
I am always fascinated when people talk about 'the forging of a nation'. Most nations are forgeries, perpetrated in the last century or so.
I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel of all time you see -- one has to keep oneself afloat.
Darwinism did not strip meaning from the world but intensified it, 'by identifying it in as many aspects of life as possible'.
Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics.
For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are. . . businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but -- ominously -- fewer and fewer people laugh at it.
History--the product, not the raw material--is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been laid upon the label (its iconography, its target-group of customers) and upon the interesting problems of manufacturing bottle-glass. The contents, on the other hand, are tasted in a knowing, perfunctory way and then spat out again. Only amateurs swallow them.