What my Commonwealth experience taught me about being Scottish and those who vilify others – Ewan Aitken
Ewan Aitken grew up in Kenya before moving to Scotland at the age of seven. The following year he celebrated a famous gold medal for Lachie Stewart in the Commonwealth Games
Watching Josh Kerr talk about the amazing support from the Scottish crowd as he won Commonwealth gold, I recalled being an excited eight-year-old at Meadowbank stadium in 1970, cheering on the late Lachie Stewart to victory in the 10,000m. I still remember feeling sheer pride as he crossed the line. Not just Lachie, but Scotland had won. It was his medal and our win.
In those days, they were the ‘British Commonwealth Games’, part of the transition from their origins as the Inter-Empire Championships, then British Empire Games, reflecting the ever-changing political relationships across the Commonwealth nations.
Interestingly, unlike the Olympics and other competitions, the Commonwealth Games have teams from 15 non-sovereign states; it’s why athletes from the Isle of Man, Jersey, British Virgin Islands and Bermuda were able to make it on the podium, to name but a few.
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Realising I belonged to Scotland
Glasgow gets huge kudos for picking up the games with two years’ notice and running such an excellent event. Despite the reduction in sports and athletes from when Glasgow hosted in 2014, the number of teams taking part increased from 71 to 74 – a smaller event with greater global reach and an opportunity for more celebration of different cultures, histories and language through the common ground of sport.
In 1970, when I was cheering on Lachie Stewart, I had only lived in Scotland for 15 months. I grew up in Nairobi, moving to Dunfermline aged seven. It was a tough transition. I knew no one bar family, had no cultural references and couldn’t play football to save myself!
Intellectually I was Scottish, but in many ways Scotland was a foreign land to me. Cheering on Lachie was one of the first times I understood not just that I was Scottish but that I belonged to Scotland. My Scottishness became not just an idea but something I felt deeply, in ways beyond words.
In later life, despite or maybe even because of the challenges it brought me, I realised how growing up in Kenya and then returning to Dunfermline, gave me a precious gift, an appreciation of the power and opportunity of difference.
A dangerous mistake
Both when I was there, and when I returned and felt different in what was theoretically my own land, I had to grapple with my own identity through comparison with who and what I wasn’t. Instead of difference being a threat to who I am, it became an opportunity to learn more about who I am through the lives of others, finding both common ground and difference.
This is the dangerous mistake of those who peddle a political narrative based on a describing a divided society built on a culture of fear through a false threat created by difference. We do not protect our identity through vilifying those whose life and heritage is not like ours.
Instead, we lose the opportunity to fully make sense of who we are and how we can best live to our fullest potential. Lachie helped me feel my Scottishness, but the Scotland I want to live in is one where people from many places find common ground and flourish together whilst never losing sight of where their story began.
Ewan Aitken is a former charity chief executive and Labour politician
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