Tim Luckhurst: The Queen loves Scotland, but do the Scots love her?

Her Majesty is a very nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say. We have that on the authority of Paul McCartney, who, unusually among those who write about her, had actually met the lady. Scotland then has a peculiar effect on the regal tongue. In relations with this northernmost extremity of her kingdom Queen Liz is, if not verbose, certainly willing to place her views on the record with a degree of clarity normally absent from royal communiqués.

We are not talking here of blunt confrontation, though it is conceivable that she said something controversial to the Gaelic speakers she met on the Isle of Lewis. That would have been a safe deviation from convention, given that she does not understand a syllable of the language and neither does anyone in mainland Scotland.

I fondly imagine that the Queen, like realists everywhere, understands that languages do not die because people have lost their tongues, but rather because they have learned to speak something more useful. She may wonder why Gaelic is promoted by Dutch hippies but not by the majority in a country who understand that their ancestors never spoke it and that it lacks the terminology to describe technology invented after 1520.

Perhaps. But enough guesswork. I lack the cerebral fertility to be a real royal correspondent. Her Majesty is firmly on the record as having a "profound affection for Scotland". She has also made it as clear as protocol permits (a black rat in a mudslide comes to mind) that she is determined that it must remain part of her United Kingdom. That is how her speech on the opening of the Scottish Parliament was meant to be interpreted. She made the same sentiments plainer during the original devolution debates of 1977.

If the words "Bog off you separatist vermin" have not quite passed her lips, the thought is sufficiently present to provoke the ire of the Scottish National Party and those who, though they have never voted for independence, feel ashamed to admit they do not want it.

No doubt if they ever do, she will adopt the traditional aristocratic response to errant subjects, viz: "shoot them, we have others" – but it has not come to that. Despite inclement weather and the bizarre duty to open the world's only rotary boat lift at Falkirk last Friday (like a digital pitchfork, extraordinary only for its rarity, not its practical application), Her Majesty has opted to spend six whole days of her Golden Jubilee meeting the folk of Caledonia.

Windsors like Scotland. Victoria loved to cavort here with her friend John Brown and was passionate about the 19th-century campaign to convert the Highlands into a theme park for the seriously rich and bloodthirsty. For decades the Queen Mum relocated to Sutherland every summer and mixed gin and Dubonnet at a time when women in that part of the world were not permitted a Babycham, let alone a high-octane cocktail.

But the high-profile visits, fondness for tartan and bracing days spent massacring animals on private hillsides, all cover a deep-seated fear. Underneath it all the Windsors worry about the break-up of their core territory. They wonder whether the Scots love them as much as they should.

It is a genuine mystery, because, where the Windsors are concerned, Scotland exhibits a curious discrepancy between hard evidence and expressed mood. The polls are clear. Scots are as fond of the royals as any people in Britain. And yet, several Scottish cities have received no applications at all for permits to hold street parties to mark the golden jubilee. At the same time, a truly bizarre row is building over next year's other royal anniversary.

March 2003 is the 400th anniversary of the Scottish takeover of the UK Crown. Scots might have been expected to celebrate the occasion as proof that the Windsors are just as Scottish as they are German. Instead, a faction in the SNP has declared that any recognition of the union of the crowns could have the awful consequence of reminding Scots that they have punched above their weight in the Union for 400 years. That might discourage voters from choosing independence at the devolved general election due next May.

This is the Scottish dilemma in microcosm. Independence is rejected at the polls but cherished in the heart. So, Scots who privately revere the monarch are reluctant to express their love in public. Overt affection for the Queen is equivalent to a declaration of Unionism, and who knows what the neighbours might say about that?

As one friend puts it "You can still buy Bayer Leverkusen scarves on Sauchiehall Street, but you can't get a flag to wave at the Queen." It is a gloriously silly dichotomy, and the Queen plays it brilliantly, much better than the politicians who seek to buy it off with constitutional experiments and massive subsidies. Her Majesty knows the Scots adore her but are too cowed by nationalism to say so.

TimLckhrst@aol.com