I’m too young to remember the 1980s, though given the result of last week’s election that might not actually matter. What I want to talk about is perhaps a slightly awkward mix of left politics and culture. This is of some importance given the desire by many on the UK left to consider the impact of grassroots campaigning in Scotland. In particular, this movement was seen to involve prominent cultural figures, while the experience of 2014 was seen as a big cultural moment in the widest sense of the term.

The new found salience of Scottish nationalism has its roots in a response to the social and economic trauma following the decline of nationalised British industries in the 1970s and latterly neo-liberal policies of deindustrialisation. As has been widely recognised, the legacy of deindustrialisation still has a deep impact on a range of aspects of our national life: not least on our uniquely appalling health outcomes. But how does this respond to the question of what next for culture? Firstly I do not believe that we can separate out the future of culture from broader questions about the nature of our society and competing visions for its direction. Secondly, in the context of a new, ideologically driven UK government pursuing austerity, the question of ever increasing inequality and the multiple problems that this creates, is critical when attempting to afford people the opportunity to participate in the richness of our cultural life. For me, the greatest concern, above and beyond ‘sectoral’ issues about cultural policy or funding, is that of equality. How are Scotland’s artists placed to tackle this definitive issue of our times?

Modern Scotland has a radical foundation myth. This is a nuance that is easily overlooked, especially given the recent focus from the right on Scottish nationalism as a threatening, atavistic and ethnic force. Celebrations of Scottish culture are therefore often described (with varying levels of accuracy) as representing a revival of romantic nationalism and by extension to a regressive and insular world view. But such representations ignore the fact that the revival of Scottish ‘nationalism’ was a political response to a political problem. The nature of this problem was essentially a resurgent British nationalism that, from the 1980s onwards, posed a threat to the continuity of Scottish civic society, and the ability of Scotland to project its self-image as an essentially social democratic polity.

As the moment at which the union began to show major fault lines, the origins of an insurgent Scottish nationalism can be traced largely from 1979 onwards. The decade would see many political commentators from the centre-leftwards begin to talk about Scottish sovereignty, and raise the critical question of who had a ‘mandate’ to govern Scotland (a trope that was inverted over the course of the recent election campaign). Furthermore, the failure to achieve modest devolution in 1979 and the ensuing experience of Thatcherism is widely touted as framing a renewed dynamism in Scottish culture in the 1980s. Whatever the specifics of the political dimension of this cultural revival, resistance to the increasing marketisation of society (not least in the arts and broadcasting themselves) can be discerned.

A great deal of scholarly effort has, quite correctly, sought to question the validity of this narrative of departure from the trajectory of the British state. Similarly, the compelling notion that, in the absence of a national forum for political expression, culture stepped into the breach, is too simplistic and straightforwardly nationalistic to justify the breadth and complexity of the emergence of major new cultural voices. The solution to the lack of a parliament is not the publication of Lanark. However, part of the case that was presented by those arguing for devolution, often while specifically disavowing Scottish nationalism, was cultural. A year before it published the ‘Claim of Right’, proclaiming ‘the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs’ a document from the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly noted:

Scottish nationhood does not rest on constitutional history alone. It is supported by a culture reaching back over centuries and bearing European comparison in depth and quality…the union has always been, and remains, a threat to the survival of a distinctive culture in Scotland.

The rhetoric of this (Labour led) campaign points to the manner in which Scotland became more Scottish as a collective response to Mrs Thatcher’s crusade against the post-war consensus. A project which, as with the later pro-independence movement, was bought into by a wide range of prominent cultural figures. As a result, Scotland’s broader story since the eighties has been compelling and well wrought: warranting the status of a contemporary foundation myth. Already the struggles of the decade have entered into the realms of folklore, literature, music and film. They form a kind of repertoire from which pro-independence politicians and activists still draw. However, given the recency and symbolism of the fateful decade, it is easy to malign, in no small part thanks to the failure of the country’s social democratic consensus to tackle endemic poverty. Certainly, it is often written off as myth: a set of conceits, or poorly thought out notions about what we are or might be, that ignores the awkward and inevitable contradictions of political power and what we chose to do with it.

Nonetheless, in narrative terms, there is a definitive through-line that continues from the experience of deindustrialisation right up to the present day. But it is not ‘nationalist’ in any conventional sense of the term. Indeed, an important trope within that story, is a yearning for post-war pre-Thatcher Britain and the high water mark of British social democracy. The intensity of that nostalgia and the increasing sense of political distance from a British state that can no longer speak to the ’spirt of 45’ poses an existential question that Scotland has felt the need to try and answer in its own distinctive way ever since.

Intellectuals, particularly on the left, pride themselves on deconstructing myths. By looking beyond the comforts of narratives that necessarily omit certain awkward truths or caveats, rigorous critique can be exercised and empirical truth uncovered. However this activity can easily become repetitive and verge on the puritanical. It’s a method that probably owes a lot to an anxiety that, if Scottish politics was less restricted to domestic policy, it might not meet the kind of easy utopian hopes some project on to it. Unfortunately, the act of critique rarely offers up alternative narratives, all too often it provokes a zero sum game of debunking any collective story.

If narratives are about displaying our arguments with reality, or our attempts to make sense of the disparate, their importance in sustaining politics can be quite easily discerned. They are the precious resource on which election strategists run campaigns and very occasionally, they manage to edify the often grubby world of vote seeking. Yet, as has just been demonstrated in Scotland, the real power of narratives within politics occurs when a party links up with a wider sense of historic movement, when it successfully channels pre-existing stories. There is however, a bigger point: essentially, nations are narratives, they are a story that we chose to tell each other. In the words of postcolonial theorist Homi K Bhaba: ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time (sic) and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye.’

The wider ‘what next’ for Scotland stems from its narrative potential. This story: an adventure, if you like, in not being British, has reached a pivotal moment. Arguably, perhaps even regrettably, after the general election, Scotland, has become more singular as a country, now easily written off as a one party state. In sharp contrast to this, makers of culture in Scotland must strive to reflect the multitudes the country contains.

There is broad consensus that the nation-state evolved as part of a process that was closely linked to the rise of narrative art and print culture. As in Benedict Anderson’s oft repeated phrase the nation is an ‘imagined community’. That imaginative process is facilitated by new technology and access to a wider public sphere. As Anderson notes, ‘Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.’

It is therefore the imaginative act of comprehending and helping to shape a communal story that sustains a nation. The challenge now is how to embed that narrative of a socially cohesive society, that wants power brought closer to home, against a global backdrop that could hardly be less hospitable. Even if it does claim a far older heritage, in popular terms, the story of Scotland’s desire for nation-statehood is a relatively young one. Like me, it’s roughly a quarter of a century old. It is therefore fragile and would be more at home in an age of optimism rather than the deeply troubled and insecure world we currently inhabit.

Everywhere narratives about social cohesion, internationalism, solidarity and that which we hold in common are being challenged with unprecedented force. The nightmares of centuries of empire are haunting the fringes of Europe. The deep nihilism provoked by a world order that is premised on the ever more efficient exploitation of ever greater numbers of people and resources, shows that we are reaching a tipping point. Crises of an order that neither the old left nor the old right can address are now unavoidable. As in the close of Adam Curtis’s epic film about the imposition of ideological narratives on Afghanistan, Bitter Lake, the disorder of the colonial frontier has come back to disrupt the centre. His conclusion is disarmingly succinct: ‘What is needed is a new story and one that we can believe in’.

Stories are transformative. Narratives shape in unprecedented ways how communities choose to define themselves, what directions they take, how they interpret their past and what they project onto their future. The question of whether we can shape a coherent, inclusive and progressive story about Scotland is one that can only be answered by the style with which we tell it. It may not be particularly soothing, but at least Scotland has the historic comfort of knowing that it has helped define the direction of travel way beyond its border in previous times.

But the short answer to ‘What next for culture?’ is, a lot of massive challenges. Not just the cold grip of austerity: but a whole set of existential issues that pose at least as great a threat to the fabric of the place as those that defined the 1980s. Yet it is in such moments that the basic sustenance of the story becomes even more vital. Perhaps, in an age of ecocide in which we have fewer and fewer social reserves to turn to, it is only culture that can offer the kind of paradigm shift required to explore new beginnings. As in this eloquent passage from Uncivilisation, The Dark Mountain Manifesto the raw significance of storytelling is ultimately the only way that we can begin to ask, ‘what next’?

So we find ourselves, our ways of telling unbalanced, trapped inside a runaway narrative, headed for the worst kind of encounter with reality. In such a moment, writers, artists, poets and storytellers of all kinds have a critical role to play. Creativity remains the most uncontrollable of human forces: without it, the project of civilisation is inconceivable, yet no part of life remains so untamed and undomesticated. Words and images can change minds, hearts, even the course of history. Their makers shape the stories people carry through their lives, unearth old ones and breathe them back to life, add new twists, point to unexpected endings. It is time to pick up the threads and make the stories new, as they must always be made new, starting from where we are.