The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-16290, in the name of Clare Adamson, on MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank cottage: a Scottish cultural treasure. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I invite members who wish to participate in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament commends the work of MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank; notes that it is a charitable organisation, which was founded in 2015 to preserve and promote the legacy of Brownsbank Cottage in the Peebleshire Hills near Biggar, South Lanarkshire; understands that Brownsbank Cottage is an A-listed building, most notably remembered as the former home of the renowned poet, Christopher Murray Grieve, who was better known by his pen-name, Hugh MacDiarmid; further understands that the charity works to restore and upgrade the cottage, to conserve its contents, to promote the works of Hugh MacDiarmid nationally and internationally, to re-establish the Brownsbank Writing Fellowship for writers in residence to work from the cottage and to generate educational and community creative involvement, as well as promote literary tourism; recognises that Hugh MacDiarmid stood as a significant Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure, and believes that he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Scottish writers of the 20th century, making a profound and lasting impact on Scottish culture and politics; acknowledges that MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank has, to date, been supported by the Clyde Wind Farm Community and Development Fund, Architectural Heritage Fund, SSE Renewables Community Investment Programme, the William Grant Foundation and generous donations from the public, but that further support is urgently required; notes that distinguished past occupants of Brownsbank include the award-winning author and publisher, Matthew Fitt, and James Robertson, the inaugural Scottish Parliament Writer in Residence and author of the Booker Prize-nominated, The Testament of Gideon Mack; believes that Brownsbank Cottage has made an indelible imprint on Scottish cultural heritage and that its preservation, with immediate works required, is a cultural priority; commends the board of trustees and volunteers of MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank on what it sees as their tireless efforts to protect and promote this historical Scottish landmark; notes the view that the protection and development of Scotland’s literary heritage is vital to the nation’s cultural health, identity and confidence, and further notes the calls for the Scottish and UK governments to assist with the restoration of Brownsbank Cottage, to preserve this historic and national treasure.
17:12
I thank my colleagues for supporting the motion for debate, and I welcome to the public gallery the trustees and friends of the charity MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank, including members of the Grieve family, who have joined us this evening. They are the custodians of MacDiarmid’s legacy, and their ambitions for his former cottage at Brownsbank in Biggar deserve our collective attention. I also pay tribute to my friend and colleague, Mairi McAllan MSP; Brownsbank cottage sits in her Clydesdale constituency and she has been an avid supporter of the work of the trust and the restoration efforts. We are excited to welcome her back to the Parliament soon.
Today, we reflect on a figure of international significance. I am reminded of listening, a long time ago, to “Bookclub” on Radio 4. James Naughtie was interviewing Maya Angelou and introduced her as one of the greatest black writers of the 20th century. She immediately picked him up and said, “I’m considered one of the best writers of the 20th century—I just happen to be black.”
I think that the same could be said of MacDiarmid. He writes mainly in Scots, but he is more than just a Scots writer, and Scots writers should be recognised for their international efforts and talents. I am reminded that some of the greatest experts on MacDiarmid, and some of Scotland’s greatest writers and professors of literature and Scots language, are in the gallery this evening—so there is no pressure at all on anyone who is speaking in the debate to get things right.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Association for Scottish Literature international lecture by Petra Johana Poncarová of the University of Glasgow and Charles University in Prague, who is currently a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Glasgow. She was speaking about Gaelic and Scots in the 20th and 21st centuries. She had undertaken a wealth of research on MacDiarmid and showed not only that he loved the Scots language and was committed to bringing it back into common usage and parlance in Scotland, but that he had a great influence on the Gaelic revival in Scotland, translating many of our Gaelic poets into Scots and sharing that work in a number of publications and magazines. We are perhaps not as familiar with that as we are with some of MacDiarmid’s other work.
MacDiarmid was never afraid to question conventional ideas. He believed that reviving the Scots language in poetry was about not just literature, but reclaiming Scotland’s artistic character and culture to assert its independence and revitalise a literature that he saw as weighed down by sentimentality. His vision was to move away from the overly sentimental writing of the past and create something bold—something uniquely Scottish.
His commitment to those ideals, and his radical advocacy, are the reasons why we now recognise the Scottish renaissance in the Scots language. MacDiarmid himself described that movement as
“a new insistence on the Scots Lallans language in the first place and, beyond that, on the need to restore Gaelic as the national language of Scotland and to resume in the fullest way the great traditions of our lost heritage of Gaelic culture, and to apply these to new creative purposes.”
He saw language as the foundation of cultural revival, and his work embodied that belief.
He was ever controversial—in fact, many of my colleagues knew him personally and will speak to that. He was often a cantankerous character, shall we say, and his writings were often polemic, frequently contradictory and enduringly influential.
His passion was not just linguistic—it was political, too. He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, which became the Scottish National Party. At the same time, he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and in 1964, he stood as a Communist Party candidate against the then Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
MacDiarmid believed that Scottish identity and the lives of the people who lived here were ill served by the political establishment. His belief in the cultural and political significance of language was unshakeable, and that conviction is embodied in Brownsbank cottage. It is an A-listed building—the only one of its type in Britain to hold that status—not necessarily because of its architectural significance, but because of its former resident. The interior has been carefully preserved to reflect the character, and the two main rooms—those of MacDiarmid and his wife, Valda Trevlyn Grieve—are there to be seen. The shelves in MacDiarmid’s rooms are filled with green-spined Penguin crime novels alongside copies of his own work. Today, the cottage is a cherished site of heritage, loved and respected not just by the people of Scotland but by many beyond our borders.
The cottage has been a writers residence for some of our greatest living writers, some of whom are in the gallery this evening, such as Matthew Fitt and James Robertson, and Professor Alan Riach. Writers fellowships nurture creativity, providing space for writers to explore new styles and perspectives while shaping Scotland’s ever-evolving cultural identity.
We need to secure Brownsbank cottage for the future of Scotland. I am sure that some members may talk about the
“little white rose of Scotland”,
which, although I do not think that that was quite MacDiarmid’s view, has nonetheless been adopted by the SNP as a symbol of our national party in this Parliament. Some may mention “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle”. However, I spent some time with Matthew Fitt—who is, as I said, in the public gallery tonight—in Cleland primary school in my constituency. I saw the young people working with him in the Scots language, and learning about it. The joy and the confidence that it gave them to know that the language that they used with their families every day was good made me think of a MacDiarmid children’s poem, which I will quote. It is called “The Bubblyjock”, which is a male turkey.
“It’s hauf like a bird and hauf like a bogle
And juist stands in the sun there and bouks
Its a wunder its heid disna burst
The way it’s aye raxin its chouks
Syne it twists its neck like a serpent
But canna get oot a richt note
For the bubblyjock swallowed the bagpipes
And the blether stuck in its throat.”
[Applause.]
Thank you, Ms Adamson. Indeed, I can also confirm that Matthew Fitt was a somewhat tenacious midfield player for the Mylnes Court Warriors—a passion at the University of Edinburgh in the late 1980s.
With that, we move to the open debate.
17:19
I am really pleased to speak in support of the motion and I thank Clare Adamson for bringing the debate to the chamber. We do not get enough opportunity to talk about Scotland’s long and proud cultural history. Scotland is the homeland of many nationally and internationally recognised artists, writers, musicians and dramatists, and no more so than in the world of poetry, in which the national bard, Robert Burns, has introduced people around the globe to Scottish culture and drawn many of them to Scotland to see what else it has to offer.
Poetry, perhaps more than any other form of writing, is often shaped by the writer’s direct experiences and the places where they live. If we want to truly understand these writers and the minds that crafted their immortal works, therefore, we need to look beyond the words and to the world in which they were crafted. That is why initiatives such as MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank are so important in preserving the wider works of poets such as Hugh MacDiarmid.
As a proud son of Ayrshire, I could not allow the debate to pass without drawing parallels between Brownsbank and Robert Burns’s cottage in Alloway. As members will know, Burns’s cottage offers visitors an insight into the world in which Robert Burns was born, with the surrounding area providing the inspiration for many of his later works. In contrast, Brownsbank cottage was a feature of MacDiarmid’s later years. However, both buildings have become synonymous with their occupants, and both bring their own insights into the minds of those two gifted writers.
While Burns cottage has been preserved by the National Trust for Scotland, however, Brownsbank is reliant on the hard work of members of the Scottish charitable incorporated organisation that was created to preserve both the cottage and Hugh MacDiarmid’s legacy. The organisation is funded—as Clare Adamson’s motion points out—principally through the generosity of grant funding from the likes of the SSE Clyde wind farm development fund, the Architectural Heritage Fund and the William Grant Foundation, as well as through the generosity of individual members of the public who are committed to preserving Hugh MacDiarmid’s cultural legacy.
It is to the credit of everybody who is involved in those groups that they do not see the objective purely as preserving Hugh MacDiarmid’s past; they are also looking to the future, using his works to inspire and encourage the next generation of writers. I am delighted that, from the reinvestment in a writers-in-residence programme to the creation of a poetry board scheme for pupils in South Lanarkshire to showcase their efforts, aspiring writers will have the opportunity to build their talents on such strong foundations.
Although he may have been a controversial figure at times, there is no doubting the cultural impact of Hugh MacDiarmid. The work that is done by the MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank SCIO will give him an enduring legacy that is hugely worth while in terms of not only his own work, but how the initiative speaks to Scotland’s cultural confidence and identity and to our commitment as a nation to valuing and protecting that heritage.
As Clare Adamson’s motion highlights, we cannot afford to see buildings such as Brownsbank fall into disrepair. The cottage and other buildings like it have offered a spark of inspiration to many of Scotland’s most successful and influential literary figures. There are many arguments for their preservation, but Hugh MacDiarmid himself put it quite succinctly when he said, “You cannot light a match on a crumbling building.”
I call Emma Harper—you have around four minutes, Ms Harper.
17:23
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for allowing me to finagle wi ma keyboard to make sure that it will actually stand up to the debate.
I thank Clare Adamson for securing the debate. She has articulated very well in her motion and in her speech the importance of Brownsbank cottage and the work that is being done by the trustees and volunteers on what is, though it may be an underappreciated corner of Scotland’s literary tradition, a shining star in 20th century history. I am proud to be an MSP for the area. Clare Adamson has welcomed everybody to chamber, and I masel will welcome everyyin tae the chamber the nicht, tae.
MacDiarmid was born and schooled in Langholm, also known as the muckle toon and pairt o my South Scotland region. For the first 60 years of his life, however, his home is hard to pin down, although his formative years appear again and again in his work, with large sections of “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” referring back to his youth in Langholm.
After leaving Langholm academy, he wound up in Edinburgh, followed by Ebbw Vale in Wales, Clydebank, Forfar and Montrose; then—in the space of a little over a decade—came London, Liverpool, West Sussex and Whalsay in Shetland, where visitors today can stay in the hoose he made his hame for nine years; and then Glasgow, Dungavel and finally, too, Brownsbank.
It may have been his last home, but it was his longest lasting, and its preservation is a tribute to his wife Valda, who he predeceased, and to the trustees and volunteers who have worked so hard over the years to maintain and promote Brownsbank as a memorial to the man and his body of work.
MacDiarmid’s role in the use of the Scots language and its written form cannae be overestimated, and colleagues will shairly ken how important the Scots leid is tae me in the chamber. Hugh MacDiarmid wance said of the Scots leid:
“One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Vernacular, part of its very essence, is its insistent recognition of the body, the senses ... This explains the unique blend of the lyrical and the ludicrous”.
He demonstrated that through his own body of work: always lyrical and frequently ludicrous, surreal and moving. His publishing in Scots gave credence to the language at a time when received wisdom and the dominant establishment view was that Scots was the language of the gutter or of the undereducated.
Reading again through “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” for today’s debate, I think that his love and admiration for another Scots poet, Robert Burns, shines through, although perhaps not his admiration for some who hing their pegs on his poetry while missing the human meaning behind it. Both poets shared a lowland Scots upbringing and a sense that Scotland and its people needed recorded and shared with others, but in a multiplicity of ways, with the diversity of our land at the heart of what they wrote—or, as MacDiarmid himself said:
“Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?”
No doubt Burns would have smiled as MacDiarmid scrieved that oot.
Next year, MacDiarmid’s “The Bonnie Broukit Bairn” will be added to the higher English set text list. It is a tribute to his body of work and to the impact that he has had on our nation’s sense of its literary self and the language that we use day after day, that tens o thoosans o weans an bairns will hae the chance tae study his verse in the same context as Burns, Stevenson and John Byrne. In the same way, the work of Brownsbank is keeping alive MacDiarmid’s legacy and life fur oor generation and future generations, celebrating a body o work that has stood, and will stand, the test o time as the work o one o oor great poets and writers.
[Applause.]
I gently discourage those in the public gallery from participating, including through applause.
17:27
I, too, thank Clare Adamson for leading this debate in Parliament tonight.
MacDiarmid remains politically controversial, but artistically revered. His very identity was provocative—the striking imagery of Norman MacCaig captures it best:
“CM Grieve dived in at one end, and Hugh MacDiarmid swam ashore at the other.”
By the age of 16, he was a member of the Independent Labour Party. He left, and then, when he fell within the orbit of James Keir Hardie in South Wales, he rejoined. In 1922, he was first co-opted, then elected, as an Independent Socialist to Montrose Town Council. He joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and then the National Party of Scotland.
Expelled from the Communist Party for being a nationalist, expelled from the National Party of Scotland for being a communist, he stood as the SNP candidate in the Kelvingrove division of Glasgow in the 1945 general election, and again, in the 1950 general election, but this time as an independent Scottish nationalist.
In 1956—at the very point when many others left it for good, as the Soviets suppressed the Hungarian uprising, and the revelations about Stalinism emerged—he rejoined the Communist Party, standing as the CPGB candidate against the then Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in the Kinross and West Perthshire constituency in the 1964 general election. His poetry included “Hymns to Lenin”, who he said marked “the greatest turnin’ point” since Christ.
Of John Maclean’s “unbreakable spirit”, he declared:
“Like a lightning-bolt at last the workers’ wrath falls
On all such castles of cowards whether they be
Uniformed in ermine, or blue, or khaki.”
Hugh MacDiarmid’s poetry has an enduring, timeless quality, and so speaks to our times as well as his own. My own party’s current leaders should take heed.
“Physical power”,
he wrote,
“Is a rough substitute for patience and intelligence, and co-operative effort in the governance of man”,
and
“killing is the ultimate simplification of life.”
“The Kind of Poetry I Want”,
MacDiarmid proclaimed, is
“a poetry that stands for production, use, and life
As opposed to property, profits and death.”
He was at once an idealist and a realist, famously combining the two in the poem “Glasgow 1960”, published in 1935, in which he imagines crowds packed tight on buses and trams travelling to Ibrox stadium not for football but to watch a debate between intellectuals.
There are anti-imperialist writings that bleed dangerously into an intolerable anglophobia but, as the late Stephen Maxwell put it—members of the SNP and Alba should heed this—MacDiarmid’s was a nationalism
“to transcend nationality and to present Scotland not as the possessor of distinctive national qualities, but as an exemplar of universal intellect and aesthetic qualities, which rendered trivial all lesser distinctions.”
I am pleased to support the motion and the Brownsbank cottage project, because we need to keep that flame of intellect and culture burning. Whether we consider MacDiarmid to be a communist at heart, a nationalist in his soul or simply one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, we need to remember him and celebrate him and the values that he stood for.
That leads me to my final point. Before MacDiarmid moved to Brownsbank cottage, he and Valda lived in the laundry cottage on the Duke of Hamilton’s estate at Dungavel. Dungavel, to our shame, continues today to be run as a detention centre for asylum seekers—a so-called immigration removal centre. I hope that, tonight, in this debate, we can resolve that, as well as keeping open Brownsbank, we also pledge to do everything that we can in the name of our common humanity to close down Dungavel and regain, in the words of Hugh MacDiarmid,
“the grounds of our being”.
[Applause.]
I again ask those in the public gallery not to applaud. This is a meeting in public, not a public meeting.
I invite the cabinet secretary to respond to the debate.
17:33
I am grateful to Clare Adamson for lodging the motion and securing the debate. It is right that we celebrate the life and legacy of Hugh MacDiarmid and mark the work of the Brownsbank trustees, whom I have met in the past. I commend their efforts in promoting the preservation of this legendary poet’s work and home for future generations to enjoy. I thank the various speakers in the debate for their valuable and interesting contributions.
I begin by reflecting on Hugh MacDiarmid’s life, as others have remembered him, offering a few personal reflections. As we have heard, Christopher Murray Grieve was born in 1892 in Langholm, in what is now Dumfries and Galloway. He died in 1978, aged 86. He was a voracious reader as a boy, which set him up well for his future careers, in which he celebrated words and languages. He was a pupil at Broughton high school, the school that I would attend—many decades later, I hasten to add. Indeed, there was house that was named after him—Grieve house.
As a young journalist, MacDiarmid reported on the challenges facing those living in the mining communities of Wales for a socialist newspaper run by Keir Hardie, the Scottish founder and leader of the Labour Party. By the early 1920s, his political consciousness was growing, shaped, no doubt, by the seismic events around him: the first world war of 1914 to 1918, the Easter rising in Ireland in 1916, the Russian revolution in 1917 and his own experiences during time spent in the military.
As we have heard, MacDiarmid’s political views changed over time; they reportedly encompassed socialism, communism, labour values and Scottish nationalism. Notably, from my perspective, he was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928. I wonder what he would have made of our debate in the Scottish Parliament this evening and of the event that follows it, organised by the Brownsbank trust, to celebrate his life, his work and his home.
By 1922, Grieve had begun to use the pseudonym “Hugh MacDiarmid” when he published a verse in Scots, and his early writing heralded a new literary movement in Scotland. Hugh MacDiarmid is rightly associated with the Scots language, and he was also a strong supporter of the promotion and use of Gaelic, as were others who, with him, formed the Scottish literary renaissance.
Today, the Scottish Government has a number of interventions and projects in place to support Gaelic and Scots, with new funding to be provided in 2025-26. The Scottish Government supports bodies such as the Association of Scottish Literary Studies, the Scottish Book Trust, Scots Hoose and the Scots Language Centre. Those organisations built on Hugh MacDiarmid’s legacy by further enriching Scots language literature and raising the status of Scots in our public and cultural life.
Hugh MacDiarmid experienced years of exile, collapse and recovery in the 1930s, and he continued to dominate the Scottish literary world, even as he aged. His work in the 1950s and 1960s continued his fascination with languages and art forms as he sought to celebrate human creativity in all its aspects.
MacDiarmid’s legacy continues to help build Scotland’s reputation and inspires academic and international links. In 2023, the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, which is based in Brest, held the first international Hugh MacDiarmid conference. The Scottish Government is keen to take advantage of such opportunities in future to celebrate the legacy of poets such as Hugh MacDiarmid domestically and internationally, particularly as we continue to expand our links with Scotland’s diaspora.
It is a testimony to the vision and tenacity of the Brownsbank trustees, the support provided by MSPs from across the Parliament and the advice provided to the trustees by our national bodies that we are discussing Hugh MacDiarmid’s huge and lasting legacy in Scotland today. The debate is a reflection of the importance of protecting the place where he lived for the last 27 years of his life, for it was at Brownsbank cottage that Hugh MacDiarmid lived with his wife, Valda Trevlyn, from 1951 to 1978.
The story of the cottage forms part of our heritage, which defines who we are as a nation and is hugely inspirational, helping to create a powerful sense of place and providing a backdrop against which we live, work and have fun.
The Scottish Government delivers support for the historic environment through sponsorship of Historic Environment Scotland. Through its grant schemes, HES delivers benefits for communities by helping to regenerate and promote the active use, care and maintenance of the historic environment. I understand that Historic Environment Scotland provided feedback to the Brownsbank trust on a previous proposal, and I encourage the trust to continue engaging with our public bodies.
Hugh MacDiarmid’s commitment to Scotland and to literature has left a remarkable legacy for us. I congratulate everyone who took part in the debate and commend Hugh MacDiarmid’s work to everyone with an interest in the complexities of our history, which continue to shape us today. I commend, too, the work of the Brownsbank trustees in securing Hugh MacDiarmid’s former home for future generations to enjoy.
That concludes the debate.
Meeting closed at 17:38.Air ais
Decision Time