Robert Crawford

The finest poetry written by British citizens during the years 1939-45 was produced by T.S. Eliot and by Sorley MacLean. Each was a British citizen in a very different way. Eliot, more interested in assuming Englishness than Britishness, had already taken the un-English step of giving himself a written constitution (Royalist, Anglo-Catholic, Classicist), and gave over one of his three great war poems to the investigation and celebration of his American background. MacLean, a Gael born on the Hebridean island of Raasay in 1911, almost gave his life in the service of the British Crown when he was blown up by a land-mine at El Alamein in 1942; holding strong Communist and Scottish Nationalist views, he had decided he would fight because he was convinced Hitler would attack Russia, and because (as he wrote to MacDiarmid in 1941) his fear and hatred of the Nazis was greater than his hatred of ‘the English Empire’.

In the new dream I give you a big-radiatored 100-miles-on-a-gallon-of-water steamcar Exported by the White Sewing Machine Co, Cleveland, Ohio. You scoot with aplomb

Through Alexandria to Loch Lomond past the indigenous Argyll Motors Factory with its built-to-last Stone car over the door. People call you odd, Determined, unchaperoned, ‘fast’. Your wheels cover

Scotland, familiar...

I was in our works canteen when a call Came over the tannoy to watch him endorse the new car. As he bent and touched it, he said, ‘This product will save your area For another decade; it will be loved Equally by US management And families whom its air-cooled rear engine Will power to school. I’m saying this That you may take a pride in your work.’ Nervous execs whooshed him away...

Middle-managers drowned while whitewater-rafting Will be promoted posthumously.

How can you expect to succeed in accounts If you’re scared of the bobsleigh? Jackie,

When you’ve finished the MD’s filing And watered his plants, just open a window,

Slip into your lycra shorts And abseil down to my office.