Edinburgh’s ornamental grandeur comes at a price: this is a city that seems eternally sedated by servitude and exults in deference. Perhaps this is why Britain’s gingerbread royal family likes to use it as its main Scottish pied-à-terre. Very few public edifices are permitted to be built in Edinburgh unless they are dedicated to the Queen.
In fairness, this civic obsequiousness is not confined to Scotland’s capital. No adequate explanation has been forthcoming about why Glasgow’s grand new infirmary was named the Queen Elizabeth University hospital. It seems to have been decreed that almost every major medical facility and institution in Scotland must be named after the Queen and her lineage. Billy Connolly was entertained by the thought that a shadowy troupe of saboteurs roamed Glasgow at night throwing diced carrots into pools of vomit. Within Scotland’s municipal sanhedrin, there seems to be a secret sect dedicated to throwing royal names at each new, important building when no one is looking.
The latest manifestation of this curious pastime came last month when it was revealed that the newly completed flagship UK government base in Edinburgh will be named Queen Elizabeth House. The building, next to Waverley station, is just round the corner from the Royal Mile. It will sit alongside Princes Street, named by King George III after his two sons, Prince George and Prince Frederick. Glaswegians, who seem compelled to puncture the pomposity of anything remotely stately or important, quickly renamed their new hospital “the Sweaty Betty”. Perhaps the new UK hub that will become the home of an army of government drones could become Les Lizerables.
It’s also appropriate that one of David Mundell’s last acts as secretary of state for Scotland was to issue an oleaginous eulogium for this place. “I am absolutely delighted that her majesty has agreed to the naming of the new UK government hub in Edinburgh. The royal title is hugely fitting, given the hub will be the focus of the UK government’s work in Scotland. The building will contain a dedicated cabinet room, the first of its kind outside of London, and I very much look forward to inviting the cabinet to meet in the building once it is open for business.”
The importance of the Scotland office has been reduced in recent years to something barely above a passport agency. This has been reflected in the quality of government placemen who have been told to staff it. However, Mundell contrived to leave it less important than when he’d found it. He made it a footstool of Downing Street rather than an outpost of Scotland. Boris Johnson has rendered it a toy department by giving it to a comedy toff, an amusing way of humiliating Ruth Davidson for her disloyalty. What else did she and Mundell expect? When you spend years in a state of supplication to your bosses you don’t earn their respect, only their contempt.
Last week, Nicola Sturgeon visited the Vennel, opposite Edinburgh Castle, to pay tribute to Bessie Watson, who became the youngest ever suffragette, aged nine. She unveiled a plaque in honour of Bessie, who played the bagpipes across Britain, campaigning for women’s right to vote. Watson was, said Sturgeon, “a very impressive and a very, very inspirational young woman”. The first minister’s tenure has been characterised by an enthusiasm for honouring little-known local heroes or attending events unannounced, where she is happy to risk her dignity singing folk songs with pick-up bands or dressing up in Viking warrior gear, as she did at two recent events.
Sturgeon and her aides are sometimes chided for over-thinking their approach to politics and civic engagement, but she gets it right more often than not. Those who encounter her in these moments simply appreciate them for what they are: a warm acknowledgment of their work and lives from the country’s leader, a woman who received no favours or privileges on her own rise to the top.
The names of many of Scotland’s most recognisable landmarks that bear an incongruous royal imprint are probably too old and fondly regarded to be changed now. Not so some recent places and buildings. The Queen Elizabeth University hospital is barely four years old and its name hasn’t settled into the folds of the public consciousness. You would hope that, if Scotland gains its independence, the hospitals and infirmaries bizarrely named for impervious royalty will be renamed in favour of those physicians who were born or worked in Scotland and helped advance medical science and care, such as Joseph Lister, Alexander Fleming and Elsie Inglis.
After a decent stretch, post-independence Scotland will surely begin to dismantle most manifestations of foolish royal fealty. A grown-up country should be sparing with its garlands and civic beatifications. Only the names of those who have earned our admiration by displaying heroic attributes in the service of others in peacetime and at war should adorn our cherished buildings and spaces.
As for Edinburgh’s brand-new government centre, I’d propose Irvine Welsh, Margo MacDonald or Eddie Turnbull. Perhaps, too, in the naming of any new Edinburgh hospital it could be time to overlook the unorthodox methods of William Burke and William Hare. Instead, we should accentuate the positive and recognise their sterling contributions in the cause of medical research: every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.