ABSTRACT
It is clear that Irish politics continued and continues to interest and animate the Irish Catholic community in Scotland and that the politics of anti-imperialism and republicanism has also become refracted through Scotland so as to produce a range of different interventions in the politics of past and present Scotland. For some politics has been a marker of difference which has generated a profound sense of alterity from Scottish society. But it has also served as a beachhead through which the Irish Catholic community has connected and found communion with progressive social, economic, cultural, and political movements in Scotland. This chapter begins with an examination of one testimony which proves to be effective in opening up the complex issues which surround manifestations of Irish politics in Scottish life. The stories of two participants with personal experiences of subjugation and rebellion in Ireland will then be examined, one recalling events back in the period 1916 to 1921 in the run up to the establishment of the Irish Free State, and one offering more recent insights into the troubles which flared in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s. Attention is then devoted to the kinds of populist and schematic understandings of Irish history and politics which circulate in Scotland with specific reference to the development of what might be called a ‘rebel music scene’. The bulk of the chapter explores the testimonies provided by a small number of more seriously engaged participants who have become involved in overt expressions of support for the Irish nationalist and republican cause. What proves fascinating about these activists is the many and complex ways in which their solidarity with the Irish cause has mutated into a diversity of competing and at times conflictual conceptions of what might constitute a progressive politics for contemporary Scotland.
