Robert Burns and the #IndyRef

Unedifying times in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum as people with lots of time on their hands resort to arguing over how a man who died in 1796 would vote in 2014.

Yes, as Scots come together all over the world to celebrate his memory, some people are unable to resist claiming him as one of their own, as if we’d see him at a Better Together stall in Dumfries or a Yes Scotland meeting in Ayr. Silly stuff, not to mention unhelpful.

Every couple of months or so, some academic or politician lays claim to the National Poet. This evening, Scotland Tonight will have ‘experts’ on to argue it out. Was he a unionist? Was he a nationalist? Is a Nationalist in the 1790s the same as a Nationalist in 2014? Is the British state in the 1790s the British state of 2014? What would Burns have made of the EU? Does he feel the SNP’s fiscal plans are feasible? Is he a fan of Trident? Did he support Team GB? Why didn’t he add #indyref to the end of his poems?

If nothing else, it is unpleasant to see The Bard, a man who brings Scots together around the globe, being used as a pawn in the politics of our age. On both sides, claiming Burns’s phantom vote is a ploy for the patriotic ground. Unionists want to bend over backwards to prove that they love their country as much as the next Scot, and Nationalists want to show that it is they who have Scotland’s best interests at heart. It’s playground stuff.

This is not his fight. To extrapolate from his writings a definitive vote on the Scottish referendum is a cheap and tawdry ploy. The man is dead, and died in a world so fundamentally different from ours that it is pointless to draw him into the unbecoming bickering of 2013. As some politicians are fond of saying, there is more that unites us than divides us, and Burns can be a symbol of that, if only he were left alone. The debate must be moved on. Burns will still be Scotland’s Bard the day after the referendum and Scots are going to have to reunite, whatever the result. Burns could remain something that Scots unite around, but presenting him as a partisan player in the debate not only sullies his memory but also makes the post-referendum healing process all the more difficult. So for all our sakes, let him rest in peace.