On 12 August, Daniela Grudsky, Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to Britain, tweeted a fireside snap with Scotland’s External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson, professing her excitement for Israel and Scotland ‘cooperating in the fields of technology, culture and renewable energy’.

The photo prompted shock and condemnation from figures at the fringes of the governing Scottish National Party, as well as former leader Alex Salmond (who now leads the rival Alba party) and the Scottish Greens, who were junior coalition partners in the Scottish Government until earlier this year.

Having taken a stridently pro-ceasefire position from early on in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the SNP has generally avoided the kind of photo opportunities with Israeli officials beloved by Labour and Conservative figures presumably taken in the hope that such images will make them look statesmanlike.

There was even a conciliatory statement from First Minister John Swinney, who claimed Robertson had met with Grudsky ‘to express the Scottish Government’s clear and unwavering position on the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza’.

But Grudsky’s description of the meeting’s contents, corroborated by a Scottish Government spokesman, was far more honest than Scottish politics usually gets. For all the platitudes and token gestures of solidarity towards the oppressed, Scotland’s economy remains embedded in the military-industrial complex, with even seemingly innocuous sectors reluctant to extract themselves from the machinery of war and occupation.

It’s fitting, then, that this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, with its theme of ‘artists, structures and figures who push back, and refuse’, should reflect upon Scotland’s role in the twentieth century’s longest-running international conflict. Cold War Scotland attempts to capture the profound effects of NATO’s rivalry with the Soviet Union and its allies upon life north of the border.

It’s a small, free entry exhibition tucked away in the back of the National Museum of Scotland. (On arrival, there was huge posters directing me to the ticketed ‘Game On’ show, ‘the largest interactive exhibition of the history and the culture of video games’, but I had to ask directions and be guided along a pretty complicated route to find Cold War Scotland.)

An introductory film tells us: ‘Across technology, society and the landscape itself, the Cold War shaped Scotland. Its legacy can still be seen today.’ Sadly, the exhibition is limited to the period between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and only the most direct impacts upon society are explored.

The curators strike a commendable balance, discussing Scottish naval bases and military recruits in equal measure to peace camps and anti-war activists. A major theme is the fear of war and the resulting civil defence preparations, which both the UK government and opponents of the NATO military machine exacerbated through propaganda.

Perhaps most enlightening are the displays about remote Scottish communities which — thanks to their strategic nautical positioning — were perhaps more exposed to Cold War international exchange than anywhere else in Britain. Soviet fishing vessels were regular visitors to Shetland, and the exhibition includes a Soviet flag and emblem, both gifted to islanders as the Eastern bloc disintegrated. Conversely, the influx of US military personnel to small towns like Dunoon sparked both conflict with residents over issues such as housing and lifelong friendships and marriages. There are striking photographs too of the impact of military installations on Scotland’s often rugged landscape from contemporary artists Roxane Permar and Susan Timmins.

Cold War Scotland also touches on the role of the Communist Party in countering the official narrative. The catalogue acknowledges that the party’s influence in Scotland was perhaps stronger than in England, but thanks to the limited time span, the show cannot show us the roots of Scottish anti-nuclear activism in the waves of political radicalism that came before.

But much as the many artefacts of militarism and anti-nuclear activism here are fascinating, after the end of national service in 1957 only a tiny proportion of Scotland’s population was engaged in either. Yet the exhibition largely fails to grasp the Cold War’s biggest impact on Scotland, which was the dependence of key economic sectors — shipbuilding, aviation and latterly electronics — on military spending.

In his book Facing the Bear: Scotland and the Cold War, Trevor Royle argues these sectors ‘gave the economy in Scotland a healthy appearance’, but that ultimately ‘an estimated 150,000 jobs in 1988 dependent on decisions made in Whitehall’. Add in the economic impact of those jobs on dependents and the supply chain, and it’s a significant proportion of a population (at the time) of five million. Under the surface, Scotland’s economy had been fundamentally weakened by deindustrialisation in civilian sectors including mining.

It’s a pity this isn’t discussed, but not surprising. Both the industrial might and inspiring trade unionism — particularly the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of 1971 — that defined Clydeside shipbuilding are looked back upon, in popular culture and radical history, with justifiable pride. But rarely is the industry’s role in fuelling conflict part of the story, nor the significance of communist trade union conveners taking on a boss class seeking to extract maximum profit from militarism.

When BAE Systems in Govan was blockaded by Workers for a Free Palestine late last year, it was largely referred to as an ‘arms factory’. To many younger activists, it would not have been at all obvious that this was one of the shipyards saved by the UCS work-in four decades ago.

The 2018 documentary film Nae Pasaran, the story of Rolls-Royce workers in East Kilbride who refused to service Chilean fighter jets after the 1973 coup, was a rare acknowledgement of the close relationship between Scottish industry and warfare. Mostly, however, it is left unsaid — for the simple reason that it cannot be confined to the past. How else could a government that has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and supports nuclear disarmament continue to funnel public subsidy to arms companies? The jobs in question remain some of the few skilled, well-paid and unionised in the economy. They also offer strategic and narrative leverage to both the unionist and separatist camps in a country where politics is still defined by the national question.

In a foreword to the catalogue — which on the whole is much stronger than the exhibition — National Museum of Scotland director Chris Breward states that the objects and stories of the exhibition ‘are more important than ever given the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine’. As official narratives in Britain revert to Cold War type amid this war, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and rising tensions between the US and China, pockets of resistance are emerging again. The Workers for a Free Palestine blockades are one example; the Scottish TUC resolving to oppose the AUKUS pact for Australian nuclear-fuelled submarines, which manufacturing unions hope will bring skilled work to Britain, another.

Cold War Scotland offers a reminder of how a country at the heart of NATO was far from united in its national resolve. But in removing the Cold War from the wider context of militarism and Scotland’s particular dependence on the military industrial complex, it ultimately falls short.