Scottish independence: I can’t help but admire Dame Viv’s punk passion
I hope that I'll still feel passionate about politics when I'm in my seventies
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.It is tempting to think of Dame Vivienne Westwood as a barmy old trout. Or an inveterate self-publicist. Or a political ingenue, who should stick to pleats rather politics. Her latest verbal smoke bomb, tossed our way during her show at London Fashion Week, was as disruptive as any she has launched in a colourful career that has spanned five decades.
In showing her support for Scottish independence — her models wore “Yes” badges as they strutted the catwalk — Dame Vivienne told reporters that she “hated England” and went on to portray her homeland as a place where capitalists ran wild, where the government did as it pleases, and frackers were allowed to despoil the countryside and poison our water.
Westwood was born 73 years ago in the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle, a place that couldn't sound more English if it tried, and the collection she launched back in 1997, when we all believed things could only get better, was called Anglomania. Whatever one thinks of her recently-formed Dystopian vision of England, it is difficult to reconcile her view that Scotland is so much better, a place where politics is for the people and, as she puts it, “they already have a much more democratic financial system”.
“In England,” she continued, “there's hardly any democracy left” and depicts a country where council flats are demolished to make way for luxury homes. She set out her manifesto in a broadcast on her website, and I felt like shouting at the screen: “It's Scotland and England you're talking about, Vivienne, not North and South Korea.”
Of course, the forces of conservatism have poured scorn on Dame Vivienne's outpourings, and her statement that she “hated” England, given that her distaste of the establishment didn't quite run to refusing an OBE and later a damehood, was reckless and ill-considered.
It has given right-wing columnists the excuse to attack her, but largely because they don't agree with her view on Scottish independence. If she'd sent her models out wearing “No” badges, and launched a similarly scatter-gun defence of the union, she'd be hailed, in the time-honoured fashion, as a national treasure, one of the eccentric cultural figures who make Britain great. Instead, she's Public Enemy No. 1, someone who epitomises the vacuousness and the posing of the fashion industry.
Westwood doesn't really care what anyone else thinks. She's a 73-year-old punk who turned up at Buckingham Palace without knickers and is ready to say what she thinks, particularly when she's got a new biography in the offing (it's out in October). But why not? I really hope that, in my seventies, I feel passionate enough about politics, about injustice, about the environment, about inequality, to have the courage of my convictions, to make a public stand and not to give a stuff about what others think.
I once saw Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser, well into their seventies at the time, having a proper political row in a restaurant, full of passion and invective. That's how I'd like to grow old, I thought, still raging against the system. And that's why, for all her cockamamie opinions, there's a part of me that thinks Vivienne Westwood is a true British, or even English, hero.
The Independent has disabled comments on all Scottish Independence Referendum articles while polls are open. The Scottish Referendum Act seeks to ensure the vote is unaffected by reports of how people are voting.