Tucked away among some of the roughest and toughest mountains of Western Scotland, and at the head of a ridiculously picturesque pencil-thin loch, lies the tiny community of Glenfinnan. Boasting two hotels, a railway station with several trains daily, and an old rail carriage converted into a hostel, Glenfinnan still manages to exude an air of rare calm, keenly felt as you stroll towards the loch through the higgledy-piggledy of houses half-hidden among the luxuriance of rhododendron bushes and assorted other green things.
Glenfinnan has made its mark on the more popular consciousness for two distinct reasons. Firstly, its curious viaduct, straddling the entrance to Glenfinnan proper, has found fame for its appearance in one of the Harry Potter films. Secondly, it is the place where Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, first hit the Scottish mainland and, on August 19th 1745, raised his standard to claim for himself the British throne. A bunch of Highlanders enthusiastically joined him on his ill-fated venture, which came to an abrupt end at Culloden, just outside Inverness, in October 1746 when, to put it bluntly, his followers were beaten to a pulp by the government forces led by the Duke of Cumberland.
There followed particularly grisly times for the folk of Highland Scotland. Firstly, Cumberland and his buddies set out on a quest of bloody reprisals against these nuisance Highlanders that was tantamount to genocide. Efforts to completely eradicate the Highland culture were followed by the notorious Clearances, when large numbers of folk were thrown off the land, either shipped to North America or to starve, to be replaced by sheep.
While the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie is less clear-cut than some would like us to believe - he was from France, not Scotland, and a good number of Scots fought on the side of the British government and 'Butcher' Cumberland - he has nevertheless passed into folklore as an icon of Scottish freedom. Calls for the independence of proud Scots from those conquering English b*****ds down south still ring loud these days, thanks in part to the successful political antics of Alex Salmond and his Nationalist cronies. Yet I find these cries increasingly hollow. This may be partly because what I consider 'quintessentially Scottish' is a far cry from Mr Salmond and his devotees' notion. And with all this polemic about greater independence and self-determination, I find it deeply ironic that the latest wave of invaders has actually been welcomed with open arms. I refer to the multinational corporations who have come, seen, and conquered with their army of windfarms. 'Come. Rape, plunder, destroy our beautiful landscape. You have our blessing' is the attitude to money-grabbing entrepreneurs often based hundreds of miles from Scottish shores.
There is Scotland. And there is Highland Scotland. To the sharp suits strutting their stuff round the buildings of Holyrood, life among the hills and on the edge of sea lochs is a world away. From the viewpoint of the urban power base Highland life is, I feel, second class, eked out by people on the periphery. People who don't really count. Not very much.
In stark contrast to the royal treatment meted out to the new conquistadors is the dismissive approach to small communities that are unfortunate enough to be located near to a new windfarm proposal. A 'consultation process' takes place, a sop to democratic process. A closer look at what actually happens shows this 'consultation' to be similar to that which might be afforded to somebody on Death Row, asking them whether they prefer pork or lamb for their final dinner before the electric chair. The recent passing of the Corriemoillie windfarm proposal (see the link from this blog) is a typical example, where the Highland Council majority rides roughshod over the hearts and souls of many of the local inhabitants, going against its own previous rulings and recommendations as to locations suitable for gangs of turbines, to satisfy their own unspoken agenda. The cynical and heartless dismissal of local voices echoes the treatment dished out to Highlanders by Cumberland the Butcher some 250 years ago. OK, it doesn't involve rape and murder on a literal level, but it does destroy a considerable part of a way of living, and of what is dearly cherished, by many people living in the rural Highlands.
I once attended a meeting about windfarms, organised in Inverness by the Wilderness Foundation (incidentally, not one of the 30-odd members of Highland Council who were invited bothered to turn up). A man in a suit gave an excellent presentation on why upland windfarms are a waste of money, and how the sacrifice of countryside is far too high a price to pay. Then another man in a suit gave a rather defensive presentation about why harnessing the wind in the hills is so important. There followed questions and answers, generally pretty learned queries from pretty learned people. Then a man got up and started to speak. He was barely coherent, and looked on the edge of a mental breakdown. He lived in a village nearby, it transpired, had lived there all his life. Now some turbines had appeared near his house and where he walked the dog, and he didn't know what to do. His emotional outpouring had everybody feeling decidedly twitchy. It cut right through the graphs and statistics. It is people's lives we are talking about here; and no-one had the heart to tell him there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.....
This all poses a riddle to me. How can people with such a strong complex about being invaded - of having their own freedom denied them - so easily become so beastly in turn - even to those who are apparently of their own kind (fellow Scots)? Yet this is precisely what is being dished out to local communities by Highland Council, by Alex Salmond and his neo-conquistadors, and undoubtedly by others.
Is it possible that some light can be shed upon this most strange state of affairs by considering the phenomenon of 'abuse bonding', or the 'victim-perpetrator bond', as John Lash calls it? Certainly, other avenues of research fail to explain a thing about the situation. 'Abuse bonding', as applied by some modern psychologists to dysfunctional family situations and addictive relationships, observes how the abused so often becomes, in time, an abuser. Catherine Keller, quoted in Chapter One of 'Not In his Image', remarks how, in dominator cultures, violence arises ' in situations where abuse communicates itself from one generation to the next. Over and over again, we see the causing of pain - destructiveness and abuse - flow out of a prior wounding.'
Abused and abuser exist in a kind of perverted collusion, and the abused so often turns abuser. John Lash extends the analysis of this dynamic into social, cultural, and religious contexts, and we can do the same here, thus bringing light to bear on the goings-on already alluded to in Scotland. The initial instinct is to imagine that those who have visualised themselves for so long as victims will, once freed from that role, be kind, generous, and caring to others. Not a bit of it. The abused becomes the abuser; victim turns perpetrator.
Think I'm exaggerating? Ask the people of Achanalt and Achnasheen, of various parts of rural Perthshire, and a host of other communities bulldozed by Scottish authorities with an unspoken agenda. Instances are readily available: go to the Windfarm Action Group (WAG) website for starters. It is the principle at work of the sol niger, the Dark Sun: nowhere are we so unconscious as in the centre of our own current universe (which we assume we know so well), be that our individual psychology or the goings-on in the world around us. It is easy to analyse history, far more difficult to see what is really happening now, right under our own nose.
A final point. John Lash states, at the beginning of Chapter Seventeen of 'Not In His Image', that 'Monotheism begins with a god who hates trees.' He just as easily say 'a god who hates mountains'. Here is the quote, from the Book of Deuteronomy in the (Un)holy Bible: 'Ye shall utterly destroy all the places where in the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree....' This is the pathological psychological basis of the invasion of the windfarms, dreamed as it is by a bunch of dominators with unreconstructed monotheistic egos. Perpetrator mentalities, nature haters. I rest my case (for now). And I shall return to Glenfinnan, to its hills, its lochs, and its wild places.
Note: a careful look at the top picture shows smoke from a wildfire behind the hillside on the right, apparently started by some people camping and trying to burn their toilet paper after using it ....
