The Olympic opener defined Britishness
THE self-styled "greatest show on Earth" has finally begun in London, seven years after the city won the right to host the Olympic Games.
In the intervening years we’ve had the overbearing hype about how London 2012 would be the most wondrous event ever held in the UK and will have a legacy to last through the ages. On the other side of the coin, the sceptics and naysayers have maintained the whole thing is a colossal waste of money that will benefit London, and London alone.
One thing the Olympics being held in this country has illustrated though is just how hard it is going to be for the SNP to break up the United Kingdom. Whether the Scottish Nationalists like it or not, the 300 years Scotland has spent in the Union has inevitably bound us together with the English, Welsh and Northern Irish so that we have a shared identity and culture.
Yes, we have our own Scottish identity and culture, but we also have a British identity and culture interwoven with the other countries in the UK.
Nothing demonstrated this more effectively than the opening ceremony. It can sometimes be difficult to define Britishness because of the sheer level of diversity within the UK but the ceremony’s director, Danny Boyle, did a better job of it than any politician ever has.
Boyle may be better known as the wealthy film director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, but he is a Labour Party supporting, working-class boy from an Irish-Catholic family in Manchester. It was clearly this background that enabled him to define so clearly what Britishness is.
Cleverly starting with children’s choirs deftly merging anthems from the UK’s four countries to show the unity of our kingdom, the ceremony then took us on a tour of what is great, good and fun about Britain: the Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution, the NHS, pop music, children’s literature, genius engineers and a whole lot more that space permits me from listing here. Even Mr Bean was funny, that’s how good a show it was.
It was all a bit bonkers, and all the better for it. The things listed above we take for granted as they are just part of our everyday lives, they are all that we know. But by putting them on display to a global audience of billions, it showed the nation what is brilliant about Britain and what it means to be British.
The independence referendum in October 2014 is going to ask us if we want to reject our Britishness. I firmly believe the vast majority of Scots are happy being Scottish, British and part of the UK.
I also think most Scots know that in reality if we were independent it would have very little impact economically, one way or the other. So why bother going through all the hassle of being a separate country when there is so little to gain but so much socially and culturally to lose?
When I saw Chris Hoy, a proud Scot, leading out the Great Britain and Ireland team, the last team to parade as the host nation, I thought then Scotland will reject independence.
I also thought then that after an hour and a half of what seemed like a never-ending parade of competing nations, the last thing the Olympics needs is another country to make the opening ceremony even longer.
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