Roch Winds: A Treacherous Guide to the State of Scotland

Did Scotland’s rough wind become something more after the referendum, as so many hoped it would, or did it blow itself out? What power can pessimism have in a nation of newfound self-confidence?

A generation ago, the socialist poet Hamish Henderson forecast that ‘mair nor a roch wind’ - more than a rough wind - would rush through the great glen of the world as empires and nations collapsed. In Roch Winds, three young radicals pick through the rubble left in the wake of the storm that propelled the Scottish National Party into a position of unprecedented political dominance in Scotland.

This darkly humorous book dissects the rise of the SNP and the fall of Labour during the months leading up to 2014 Independence Referendum and beyond. Drawing on their involvement in the Yes campaign for independence and the Labour Party, the authors cast their eyes to Scotland’s future and to radical horizons. Fluent, funny and full of fighting talk, this book is for everyone who has ever wondered what lies behind the tartan curtain of Scotland’s new establishment.

Cailean Gallagher, born in 1991 and raised in Glasgow, has struggled with embryonic nationalism since contracting it at Balliol ‘the Scottish’ College, Oxford. A life-long Labour member, he succumbed to political nationalism and joined the staff of Yes Scotland in 2013, working first as a researcher analysing the sewage produced by the No campaign, before taking on a strategic role to persuade Labour members to vote Yes. In an effort to repair any damage done and return to the Labour fold, he organised the General Election campaign for Labour MP Katy Clark, before decamping once again to England to plunge into the history of the poor political judgment of socialists and organise health workers for a small trade union.

Rory Scothorne, born in 1992, was raised in various bits of Edinburgh which he euphemistically describes as ‘leafy’. His fiery articles (and hair) have punctuated Scottish debate since he co-founded National Collective, the cultural Yes organisation, in 2012. Upon realising he had created a monster he fled to join the more cantankerous crowds of the Scottish Labour Left, but somehow still has Yes-voting friends and political allies. A graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh and Sussex, he has coordinated, disparaged, and radicalised various left-wing organisations, most lately Momentum Edinburgh.

Amy Westwell was born in 1993 and grew up in Leith. A sans-culotte at heart, she pretends to be a historian and has attended Glasgow and St Andrews University in this guise. She mainly studies the history of political thought, particularly the history of hating the rich and their way of life. She has sold her labour to around 14 employers, but has been most productive working against them with Unite the Union. Harbouring a misguided belief in the communist potential of workers’ education, she intends to continue to read history while persuading the people that it is not really there.