Scottish Parliament-Ben Gerrard

For much of the past week and a half, since we arrived in Scotland, we have been exploring the political history of this unique country through a cultural and psychological lens. Today we had first hand experience of Scotland’s modern day political process as we visited the new Scottish Parliament buildings.
Like many structures housing the seats of Government these building seek to represent the aspirations of it’s founders and it’s people, but having been built in the modern era it does it in many much more visually spectacular ways than traditional structures could ever hope to achieve.
Designed by a Spanish architect Enric Miralles, the overall layout of a the buildings that make up the Holyrood Parliament, represent a handful of leaves that he threw down on a piece of paper. The buildings are meant to feel like they erupt from the landscape in synergy with their surroundings. These surroundings include a park, the volcanic crag of Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Palace. Thus the park forms the stem or branch to which the leaves are attached and the grass running down off the slopes of Arthur’s Seat is left unkempt to brush up against the buildings contoured walls and windows.
Once inside the main building one can look up to see large overhead skylights in the shapes of the leaves, many of which also look like large eyes. The use of the upside down boat structure that is seen in ancient buildings such as St Giles church has been reinvented inside the parliament to represent Scotland’s affinity with boating, fishing, and it’s picturesque coastline.
The architectural splendor and hefty financial investment in this structure speak of its great importance to the Scottish people. Scotland’s first record of a parliamentary meeting was in 1235 and was known as the Travelling Parliament, as it had no home. In 1639 Parliament Hall was built behind St Giles church on the Royal Mile for the princely sum of 10,500 pounds. In 1707 Scotland was on the verge of bankruptcy and to settle its accounts signed the act of Union with England, agreeing to transfer its parliamentary representation to Westminster. Here it stayed for nearly three hundred years, until the modern day Scottish Nationalist movement finally won it’s push to reinstate a Scottish Parliament in 1999, and five years later this magnificent (yet controversial) structure was completed. As we have also learned in this class Scotland can be attributed with being at the watershed of modern day, bureaucracy, the separation of church and state, and civil rights: all dating back to the Arbroath declaration under Robert the Bruce in 1320. In the present day Scotland still leads the way as 45 of it’s 129 MP’s are women.
Among the buildings physical and visual features are several pieces of art representing Scotland’s evolution, and the thoughts of its people. One of these is a three panel text-based piece drawn from the women of Scotland, a disparate group of which were asked to write a single sentence about the most influential woman in their lives. Put together by the artist Shauna McMullin Travelling the Distance makes reference to such significant Scottish figures as Mary Queen of Scots, as well as many lesser-known Scottish mothers and matriarchal figures. Other features of the building include the structures around the odd shaped windows of the 129 Scottish Members of Parliament (MP’s). These structures, along with the prodigious use of glass in the building, represent the openness and accountability of its inhabitants, and the political process. Likewise, the structures around the windows represent curtains that can never be closed. Inside the MP’s offices the windows form unique window seats, or thinking pods, for the MP’s to sit in and contemplate their roles before getting down to work.
In an airy atmosphere dominated by light oak the main debating chamber is a sight to behold. With the largest public gallery of its kind in Europe and unlike traditional parliaments in Westminster and the like, Scottish parliamentarians do not face off opposing each other (at a distance of two and a half sword lengths) but sit in a semi circle around Alec Ferguson, the Presiding Officer, who plays a role like that of the speaker of the house, but unlike the English parliament the role is up for election every four years with the other MP’s seats, on the first Thursday in May. The Parliament also has meeting rooms for its 14 committees, the most unusual of which being the Public Petitions Committee, which must consider every petition put forward by a Scottish citizen baring at least one signatory. From these public petitions many pieces of Scottish legislation have been born. The Countries National Parliament has devolved to Scotland all matters not pertaining to national or international issues and this combined with the fact that regaining their parliament against the tide of history is probably why the term devolution is used to describe Scotland’s modern day parliamentary process.
In handing this power back to the Scot’s the Queen of England has also gifted them with some beautiful structures and works of art as well as a young tree known as a Rowan tree, which is said to have the ability to ward off witches. This is perhaps a subtle reminder of how a former English Queen also baring the name Elizabeth, felt about her menacing Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots.