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Love of one's country is not expected to be rational. Oceans of spilled blood, from Ypres to Srebrenica, attest to Europeans' passion about their national identities. So when Scotland finally achieved some measure of autonomy last year — with its own assembly and executive empowered to spend money and write laws in most areas of domestic policy — the goal was not only to make government run better but also to satisfy the deep longing for nationhood that has persisted since Scotland was armtwisted into union with England in 1707.
But how is devolution, as the process of handing power back to regional and local bodies is known, actually working? Has the long struggle to claw back authority from Westminster to Edinburgh accomplished anything tangible?
The town of Paisley — 79,000 people living 12 km west of Glasgow — provides an answer. A century ago it was rich and famous. More than a million shawls, with their trademark swirling pattern, spun from Paisley's looms to drape shoulders around the world. Other Victorian industries, like the manufacture of marmalade, custard powder and thread, followed later by automobiles and ships, employed thousands in roaring factories. But by the 1980s these sources of prosperity had shriveled. The town became a grim shell, famous only for unemployment, drugs and shabby housing estates.
Not any more. Paisley is on its way up again. And while the new Scottish government is still in its infancy, it is already intensifying a trend key to Paisley's renaissance: a conviction among the town's movers and shakers that things really can get better, if they work together to make it so. People feel empowered by the knowledge that help is in the hands of Scottish officials and legislators who grasp their problems and will return a phone call quickly.
The residue of 20 years of blight is still all too evident. Factory buildings lie empty in the center of town. Rates of cancer, heart disease, teenage pregnancy and crime are higher here than in the rest of Scotland. Of the 173,000 inhabitants of Renfrewshire, the local authority in which Paisley is located, 38,000 are defined as "economically deprived." The Job Centre in the middle of town is a bustling place, with young guys clutching application forms zooming in and out on inline skates. Unemployment is low, but there's not much on offer except minimum-wage jobs.
Still, that's better than a decade ago. Compaq and Ciba Pigments have high-tech plants nearby. Glasgow's airport, only a few kilometers away, is throwing off many new jobs in delivery and technology firms. Real estate prices are rising; old tenements are being refitted as luxury apartments.
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