At the end of the show a question from Stephen Cameron.

Recommendations:

Stuart

“Rabbits” by Hugo Rifkind

Tommo has just started at a new school – a training ground for the Scottish elite – when his friend Johnnie’s brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There’s a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo.

A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It’s the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals.

Awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister currents beneath the surface and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/rabbits-2/

Eamonn

“Our Dirty War: The British State and the IRA” BBC Northern Ireland - Peter Taylor

Stakeknife was a super-spy, a secret agent working for both the British and the IRA. He walked a precarious tightrope in an undercover war where exposure meant death. Operation Kenova, the long-running investigation into Stakeknife and the so-called dirty war, which is now coming to a close, brings Peter Taylor back to Northern Ireland. He revisits the chilling IRA interrogation tapes he initially uncovered and talks again to grieving families devasted by the loss of their loved ones to the IRA’s brutal interrogators and killers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001x24x

Sara

www.salvo.scot  

https://liberation.scot/  

“Doun-Hauden: The Socio-Political Determinants of Scottish Independence” by Alfred Baird

There is an increasingly urgent need to provide a better understanding of the phenomenon that is Scottish independence. Many commentators assume general policy matters remain key influencers of voter decisions on whether to support or reject Scottish independence. This may grossly underestimate and misunderstand the real complexity of the matter. Here, the author uses his academic expertise to ‘ground out’ an analytical framework which helps to identify, based on analysis of key environmental factors, the fundamental determinants of Scottish independence. It is argued that the framework, entitled ‘The Socio-Political Determinants of Scottish Independence’, permits far deeper analysis and understanding of the Scottish independence challenge. Collectively, the nine socio-political determinants which the author has ‘ground out’ of the data collected and analysed, help to explain and underpin the quest for, and outline the barriers opposing, Scottish independence. Each of the determinants is analysed using appropriate and relevant theories and supporting data. It is argued that this work represents a new, comprehensive, robust, and scientific way to approach the subject of Scottish independence. It is an approach that has arguably never been taken before in any of the growing mass of literature concerning the subject of Scotland’s independence, and hence represents an important and unique contribution offering new and provocative insights into Scotland’s quest for liberation. As such the book will be of interest to those interested in Scotland, in Scottish independence and to self-determination of peoples and nations more generally.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doun-Hauden-Socio-Political-Determinants-Scottish-Independence-ebook/dp/B086ZTRXM8