UNIVERSITIES should go beyond simply issuing “guidance” in a bid to stamp down on anti-Scottish and anti-working class behaviour – and instead treat it in the same way as homophobic or racial discrimination, a leading author on class has said.
Darren McGarvey, who in 2018 won the prestigious Orwell Prize for his book Poverty Safari, spoke to The Sunday National after Edinburgh University issued guidance asking students not to be “snobs” in response to more than 200 reports of Scots being mocked over their backgrounds.
McGarvey said he “just understood straight away”, having experienced similar discrimination.
“It's just a typical kind of class prejudice and ignorance,” he said. “The sort of questions that they ask and the sort of reactions they have to working-class people having jobs or different cultural interests betray all of that ignorance. I've gone through that myself.
“I'm an author from a working-class background, a broadcaster from a working-class background, a performer from a working-class background. I'm operating in industries where middle-class people from wealthier backgrounds tend to dominate at the highest level, so I understand that.
“I know from being in rooms with executives at different times, and I know particularly how I was treated in the arts before I had success with my first book versus how I was treated after the success.
“Everybody in Scotland's whole posture towards me changed once I got that Orwell prize. Before that, I was seen as just an aggressive working-class person.”
Billy Kay, the Scots author and broadcaster who studied at Edinburgh University from 1969 to 1974, said he had also experienced such prejudice.
“When she handed it to me, I said to her in my best Scottish standard English, exactly the same voice as I'm speaking to you, I said, ‘Oh, that's interesting. You're doing Georg Büchner. You'll get a lot of students from German coming along to that because we are studying it this year.’ “And she replied, ‘would you mind repeating that in English, please?’”
“I was taken aback by her feral arrogance and ignorance. I've never come across anyone like that in my life before,” Kay added. “It’s sad to hear that they’re still doing that.”
Kay said that Edinburgh University itself did good work promoting Scottish culture – and recalled that during his studies it had a particularly good Scottish literature department.
However, he said that discrimination showed more needed to be done to educate the privileged students on Scottish history.
“In a way it's outrageous that the kids from Scotland are experiencing discrimination in their capital city, in an ancient university that goes back to the Reformation, because one of the golden things in Scottish culture is the tradition of the democratic intellect,” he said.
“Students come from a broad spectrum of society. There was a much broader spectrum of people getting access to universities like Glasgow and Edinburgh than was the case in Oxford and Cambridge, which was very rarified.
“That’s something in Scottish society to be very, very proud of, and anything that undermines that is bad for Scottish culture, bad for Scottish society, and bad for the people living in it.”
“It was a class-driven action they were taking,” he said. “The language of class is once again becoming part of our vocabulary.”
In recent years, branches of the 93% Club – which represents people who went to state schools instead of private ones – have sprung up at other Scottish universities such as Glasgow and St Andrews.
With young Scots becoming more awake to class divisions, educational institutions should be taking it more seriously, McGarvey said.
“You can evidence class prejudice the same way you can evidence any other form of bigotry. It's just that [Edinburgh University] doesn't seem as sensitive to that particular form of discrimination as it might LGBT or race-related discrimination. It absolutely should be sensitive to those things, but for some reason in this intersectional world, class prejudice is OK.”
He went on: “So I hope Edinburgh University formalises some of this guidance that they're offering, because if it's just an optional thing like, ‘oh, please, don't be a snob. Please don't betray the fact that you're really ignorant while simultaneously regarding yourself as sophisticated’, then ultimately nothing will get done.
“There has to be the same kind of penalties for stepping out of these bounds as there is for any other form of discrimination.”
In a social media post earlier in the week, McGarvey offered to go to Edinburgh University to speak on the issues of class. He said that although the offer was made in part to show support for the students raising concerns about discrimination, it still stood.
I'd be happy to come and talk to your students about their 'snobby' attitudes and perhaps put their 'achievements' in a firm economic context @EdinburghUni 😃.https://t.co/leJaea9R7e
— Darren McGarvey (@lokiscottishrap) November 12, 2024
He said: “The kids that have become a bit snobby, I think that with the right kind of intervention then they can be brought to understand and confront the roots of some of those prejudices, and also the roots of their own achievements, because I could demonstrate very clearly that if you take some of the advantages they've enjoyed as a result of the lottery of birth, there's no way that they would be at Edinburgh University.”
Kay, who is known for his 1986 book Scots: The Mither Tongue, said that questions of the Scots leid and class were deeply intertwined.
He argued that some prejudice comes from the fact that, among privileged students coming to Edinburgh from the rest of the UK, “nothing in their background had given any status whatsoever to Scottish culture”. Even in Scottish schools, Kay said, “the Scottish culture didn't have status”.
“Most of the people who speak Scots are from a working-class background. A lot of them are unaware they speak Scots, but that's what they speak. It's from a similar background to my own.
“So the work to promote Scots and to promote a knowledge of Scots is part of the desire to to normalise Scottish culture, to give it status, and to normalise it to give people pride in their own language and culture.”
He added: “If Scottish culture had more status, and we with pride broadcast that and took that into the other countries, then maybe that problem that the privileged, often English, kids have wouldn't exist so strongly.”
Billy Kay will be speaking about his book Born in Kyle, about the language, culture, history, folklore and literature he experienced growing up in the Ayrshire of the 1950s and 1960s, at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway on December 20. Details can be found on Eventbrite.
