Wings Over Scotland

Today, Johann Lamont – someone elected by nobody except the people of Pollok in Glasgow – took it upon herself to apologise on behalf of the people of Scotland for the early release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a man who may or may not be responsible for 270 deaths in and over Lockerbie, but who most definitely spent the past three years in absolute agony and being kept alive by totally artificial means by a Libyan government determined to use him for propaganda purposes.

That a country could see fit to release a dying man on compassionate grounds is something to be proud of, especially in comparison to the sort of blood-lust demanded by those across the Atlantic. As such, I was utterly disgusted by Lamont’s comments – they were arrogant, they displayed contempt, and ultimately they serve only to undermine the whole principle of human compassion. So, to stop myself bursting a blood vessel, I decided to send her an email.

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As huge crowds of primitive villagers turn out to marvel at some fire this weekend, here’s some old-fashioned journalism to ponder. Click the image to read the article.

Enjoy the torch (possibly the last spectacle invented by Adolf Hitler to still be regularly performed and celebrated), and the two weeks of the Games while they last. Try not to get sick, in either sense of the term. Try not to be alarmed if anyone sticks a missile battery on your roof (and slaps an eviction order on you for making a fuss about it or for just not being lucrative enough), or a sonic cannon, or by the bored police with machine guns hanging around your train station waiting to shoot anyone who tries to protest or take an unlicenced beverage or snack into one of the state-of-the-art stadia.

Enjoy all the top events (on telly, unless you’re a corporate sponsor), and as Boris Johnson gallivants around turning them into a giant Tory showpiece, take a moment out to give thanks to Tony Blair and the rest of Labour for making it all possible (with our money, of course) for him. Who needs hospitals and schools anyway?

As part of our continuing look at the people who haven’t yet their minds up about independence, we’re delighted to present this piece by Sue Lyons. If you’re a “Don’t know” too, we’d love to hear from you – why not drop us a line?

I am a mum and a wife. In point of fact, I’m an English wife married to a Scottish husband, with three English children from my first marriage and two Scottish children from my current marriage. Why would I even bother to mention that at all, you might wonder – surely it doesn’t matter where my children were born, surely I love them just the same? And you would be right.

What makes it worth mentioning is that my husband is a Scottish nationalist. In fact, he’s such a Scottish nationalist that were the UK government to say tomorrow “You can have independence for Scotland but you have to pay for it yourself”, he would say, “Where do I sign?”

He describes himself as “rabid” and he’s absolutely right – if you cut off his leg he would have a saltire running through it like a stick of rock (but not Blackpool rock, because that’s in England). Not for him the sitting on the fence that others might do, not for him the idea that you can vote for the SNP and yet still be undecided on independence. John is for an independent Scotland completely and absolutely. That sometimes causes fun and games in our own personal Union – our home.

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The sheer speed and barely-concealed enthusiasm with which Scottish Labour has reverted to its true neo-liberal type given even the slightest sniff of any kind of electoral success has been startling. Having gained a few dozen seats, almost all from the Lib Dems, in the council elections, the party has lurched back to the centre-right positions it occupied before the 2011 Holyrood parliamentary election, having abandoned several of them in the run-up to that vote in a desperate attempt to avert defeat.

We’ve already seen Johann Lamont doggedly refuse to oppose the renewal of Trident, and Glagow council leader Gordon Matheson prepare to backtrack on years of anti-sectarian progress by allowing the Orange Order to greatly increase its toxic presence on the city’s streets (a prime example of the Bain Principle at work, in the wake of the SNP’s controversial Offensive Behaviour At Football Act – if the SNP are taking steps to tackle sectarianism, Labour must take steps to encourage it, however insane that is or whatever their previous policy might have been).

And last week we saw a party whose 2011 manifesto opened with the dire warning “Now that the Tories are back” take every possible opportunity to jump into bed with the Tories in councils all over the country, giving the lie to the constantly-pushed official media narrative that the SNP and Labour are two near-identical centre-left social-democratic parties separated only by their disagreement over independence.

(Since the constitution is outwith the remit of councils, you might therefore imagine that Labour-SNP coalitions would be the norm all over the country, aimed at fighting savage Tory cuts together while Holyrood argues about the referendum, but Labour seems far more concerned with battling the nationalists rather than the right-wing Coalition and its increasingly discredited austerity programme.)

So perhaps nobody ought to be surprised that at the weekend Johann Lamont decided to test public opinion by suggesting that Scottish Labour – which is currently strangely at odds with the UK party on the subject – might once again abandon its opposition to university tuition fees.

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The referendum on Scottish independence has raised more than a question on what the future constitution of the United Kingdom and Scotland will look like – it’s raised an issue of who should have the ability to decide. This is a far more fundamental point, and the core principle of democracy that we hold dear is dependent on the outcome.

In 2014 Scotland will decide to maintain the UK or to dissolve it.  The possibilities that stem from the decision will shape our future, but a battle is currently raging between power and democracy for control of that choice.

Democracy depends fundamentally on the minority accepting the wishes of the majority, but first requires that it be established what it’s a majority of. Numerous commentators have raised the objection that since a vote for independence would affect the entire UK, then residents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland should also be entitled to vote. Others have raised the issue of whether Scots not currently resident in Scotland should be part of the franchise.

To find out who should properly decide the outcome of the referendum, we need to look at the agreements whose continued existence is at stake, ie the Treaty and Acts of Union themselves.

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Alert readers may have noticed a certain undercurrent of cynicism about the Scottish political media in this blog on occasion. But now and again you have to put all sarcasm aside and take your hat off to a professional who bangs the nail straight in with one swing of the hammer. Today it’s Iain Macwhirter in the Herald, who thankfully seems to be returning to form after his Murdoch-inspired red mist of recent weeks.

“‘It’s the big question of separation,’ said the Stirling Labour group leader, Corrie McChord, when asked why he was unable to form a coalition with the SNP – a party which he accepted had almost identical social policies to Labour.

Now, I may be missing something here, but I wasn’t aware that Stirling Council was in danger of separating from the United Kingdom. Why the independence referendum should have had such a decisive bearing on who runs council refuse and leisure services in Stirling is not entirely clear. Perhaps Labour believe the Nats will put something in the water or plant separatist propaganda in the wheelie bins.

Whatever, it seems that Labour think they have more in common with the party that wants to privatise most council services than the party that wants to use them as a bulwark against the austerity plans of, er, the Conservative-led Coalition in Westminster.”

We couldn’t have put it better, or more concisely. As Labour chum up with the Tories across the country (Edinburgh looking like being the sole honourable exception), and the Glasgow party prepares (as widely rumoured by SNP supporters a couple of days beforehand) to set the Orange Order loose on the city’s streets in gratitude for their help, we can’t help but ask the hundreds of Labour activists whose efforts secured the party its better-than-expected result last week: “Is this what you worked so hard for?”

A&E departments all over Scotland were reportedly swamped by spinal-injury cases yesterday, resulting from the nation collectively falling off its seat in surprise as the Scottish Affairs Committee of Westminster MPs concluded that the SNP’s proposed referendum question (“Do you agree that Scotland should become an independent country?”) was biased. The committee, headed by delightful Labour MP Ian “I only meant I’d assault you physically, not sexually“ Davidson, decided after consulting a carefully-chosen panel of “experts” that a question posed by an SNP government might just be designed to increase support for independence.

We jest, obviously. In fact it’s not entirely unexpected that such a conclusion would be reached by an all-Unionist committee of Westminster MPs who would all lose their £200,000-a-year jobs in the event of a Yes vote and who are currently engaged in producing a document called “The Referendum on Separation for Scotland“. (No, we’re not kidding – it’s really called that, and therefore clearly an entirely neutral and impartial investigation.) But there’s an interesting angle to the committee’s findings that inexplicably doesn’t get a lot of media analysis.

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Ray McRobbie has his own blog, but dropped us a line to ask whether we’d be interested in hearing from someone who used to be anti-independence but now resides in the “undecided” camp. We said we’d be delighted. Take it away, Ray.

I’ve written a wee bit on the issue of Scottish independence in the past, without explicitly outlining my own view. A couple of years ago I was quick to criticise the Scottish National Party, and I’m not exactly a fan of Alex Salmond. Since then I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot and read a lot. I’ve studied the issue in some depth for my dissertation at university, and I figure I’ll be reading and writing a bit more in the lead up to the 2014 referendum. So I decided at some point I should actually outline where I stand. At least for the moment.

As it happens, I’m not really a decisive person. I usually like to have all the facts on something before I make a choice. A yes/no question is not often easy for me as I might pick the “wrong” option. This is a strategy I cannot depend on when it comes to Scottish independence. The referendum will most likely boil down to a yes or a no, but in reality it’s much more than that.

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We’re not sure how to feel about the continuing prospect/threat (depending on your perspective) of a British Olympic football team with Scottish players in it. Sepp Blatter, the immovable president of FIFA and a man who enjoys the patronage of a great many smaller footballing nations who jealously eye the UK’s anachronistic presence in the game, has made the position on the matter about as clear as he ever makes anything.

“If you start to put together a combined team for the Olympic Games, the question will automatically come up that there are four different associations so how can they play in one team? If this is the case then why the hell do they have four associations and four votes and their own vice-presidency?

“This will put into question all the privileges that the British associations were given by the Congress in 1946.“

In other words, picking players from all four UK nations DOES represent a threat to their continued separate status. There has never been more pressure on qualifying places for the World Cup and European Championship, and Blatter would not find it hard to mobilise enough votes to change the status quo if he thought it might be in any way to his advantage.

Clearly, then, having players like Stephen Fletcher and Barry Bannan conspicuously announcing their willingness to play for such a team places the very existence of the Scottish national side in peril, and as such the reaction of all patriotic Scots would logically be one of horror and anger. We can’t imagine that any but the most fervent diehard Unionist in Scotland wants to see the Scottish team wiped out of existence, and any player prepared to risk that possibility – and it IS a possibility, as Blatter’s words make plain – for the sake of their own tiny personal gain as a second-string player in a third-rate competition ought to expect nothing but justified contempt.

But from a nationalist perspective, perhaps we all ought instead to be urging Barry Bannan and his pals to do everything in their power to pull on the Team GB shirt this summer. Maybe we should all write heartfelt letters to the SFA pleading with them to withdraw their objections to the principle. Because we can think of no single event that would be more likely to push support for a Yes vote in the 2014 referendum past critical mass than for FIFA to forcibly eject Scotland from world football.

Naturally, independence would see the national side restored, this time as of right rather than by a special bending of the rules resented by the rest of the world. Rather than being shunned, despised and booed every time he kicks a ball for the rest of his life, Barry Bannan would become a Scottish national hero on a par with William Wallace, Robert The Bruce and Wee Archie Gemmill. There would be statues of him in every city, and stirring folk songs in his honour would be sung every year on Barry Bannan Day. His money would be no good in any pub in the land.

In an age of cynicism, Scotland is crying out for modern-day heroes. Will Barry Bannan be the man to hear the call and lead a nation to its destiny? (Possibly by way of the nation taking a detour across some fields while running away from a car crash smashed off its nut, in true Scottish style.) Only time will tell.

When we started a politics website, we invested in the best equipment money could buy, because we knew we’d need to guard against double standards ourselves as well as measuring them in others. The Super HypocrisOMeter 5000 is an industrial-strength device, built to cope with the most extreme manifestations of a trait that is the stock-in-trade of all politicians. But this morning we switched it on and tried to run Labour’s reaction to a story in today’s Express through it, and look what happened:

Let’s be clear. We’re not especially fussed about the comments themselves. We’ve figuratively wished a few people dead in our time, and as we’ve recently noted, at the end of the day it’s just words on the internet. We’re deeply dismayed at the growing phenomenon where people can be prosecuted, fired from their job, or even threatened with prison just for saying unpleasant stuff that plainly isn’t meant in any threatening sense. Salmond Senior’s own admirable response strikes the perfect note of disdain.

We’re not even going to attempt to whip up any outrage about the fact that the Labour member in question chose to attack Alex Salmond’s 90-year-old father rather than the First Minister himself – that’s pathetic and despicable, rather than hypocritical. Nope, the thing that catastrophically overloaded the triple-locked shielding and emergency cutout protection of the Super HypocrisOMeter 5000 was Labour’s astonishing attempt to half-heartedly distance the party from the comments. As well as blithely and shamefully trying to insist that Mr Kelly’s views reflected a “substantive issue”, Labour’s unnamed spokesman offered the following high-handed dismissal:

“This desperate smear campaign falls at the first hurdle because this Facebook page is not owned, managed, or operated by Scottish Labour, and it will not detract from the rantings and ravings of SNP candidates – sacked or otherwise – online.

“Political parties are responsible for their candidates and officials, but members of the public must be responsible for their own behaviour.”

Those readers whose minds haven’t just boggled all the way into unconsciousness will very likely be struggling to reconcile this statement with Labour’s previous views on online extremism, at least when it’s practiced by the infamous “cybernats“:

“Mr Gray made a strongly worded attack on what he calls ‘vile cybernats’ during his final Scottish Labour conference speech. And today Mr Gray writes in The Scotsman that he has discovered ‘at least one post suggesting that a particular journalist should be shot’.

Mr Gray also accused the SNP leadership of a “tolerance of this culture”. He also said that all voters ‘should be worried’ by internet postings from some SNP supporters, who he says are ‘poisoning the vital debate we now face’ on Scotland’s future. There is also a claim from Mr Gray, who stands down as leader on 17 December, that the SNP internet posters are ‘undermining the decency of the country’.“

Iain Gray has, of course, been far from alone among senior Labour figures in insisting that the “cybernats” – a disparate group of largely-anonymous individuals, of whom all, some or none might actually be SNP members – operate under the explicit instruction and control of the SNP leadership:

“Labour’s Anas Sarwar said: “Everyone knows that Alex Salmond desperately wants a second question on the ballot and now he has left the door open for his army of cybernats to deliver the response he wants.”“

Ever since 2011, Labour and its tame media have ramped up the angle that the SNP leadership must “do something about the cybernats“. Prominent features are headlined with pious pleas or strident demands for the SNP to condemn their nefarious activities, even as elected Labour MPs, MSPs and councillors (rather than random internet users) freely compare Alex Salmond to Hitler, Robert Mugabe or Slobodan Milosevic or call SNP politicians and members ‘traitors” without the hysterical press opprobrium which accompanies “cybernats” doing the same thing.

The Facebook group on which Alex Salmond’s father was wished dead was not an open group populated by any old internet loonies who wandered along. It’s closed to the public and the controlled, vetted membership of 533 includes the Scottish party’s foremost and finest – as well as current “leader” Johann Lamont and her “deputy” Anas Sarwar along with Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran, former First Minister Jack McConnell, MPs Cathy Jamieson, Ian Davidson, Eric Joyce, Sarah Boyack, Tom Harris, Tom Greatrex and Tom Watson, and front-bench MSPs Jackie Baillie, Ken Macintosh and James Kelly, are all members.

(Most of the prominent online Labour activists whose names our readers will recognise also belong to the group, including John Ruddy, Aidan Skinner, Duncan Hothersall and Cllr Alex “Braveheart” Gallagher. Only the lovely Terry Kelly is unaccountably missing.)

We don’t think it’s dreadfully unreasonable to suggest that with a membership list like that, Scottish Labour has a lot more control and responsibility over what’s posted on the group than the SNP does over random anonymous Twitter users or comment-thread posters. In a world where suggesting that certain actions of rival politicians might be “anti-Scottish” generates hundreds of column inches and loud demands for resignation, we look forward to the blanket media coverage demanding that the leadership takes urgent action against this vile cyberBrit menace nestling in the very bosom of Scottish Labour. We’re certain it’ll be along any minute now.

The political is the personal. Nobody comes out of the womb with a view on the merits of the free market versus state interventionism – opinions are formed by someone’s experiences and environment. So where do “cybernats” come from? Speaking as one myself, and quite a recently-minted one at that, let me see if I can explain it.

I wasn’t indoctrinated into the Nationalist cause as a child – my parents are pro-Union (but I’m working on that). My upbringing was British, and I was proud of it. So what went wrong with the United Kingdom that now in adult life I disavow the very notion of Britishness and strive to bring that same UK to an end?

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The Scottish media this week has worked itself into an apoplectic rage over Alex Salmond acting (or rather, merely being prepared to act) in defence of thousands of Scottish jobs. It’s been an odd phenomenon to witness, but doubly so given that last week everyone was furious with him over some jobs that were lost.

Despite the fact that unemployment in Scotland (at 8.1%) is again lower than in the UK (8.3%), the situation remains extremely fragile and any government could expect severe criticism if it failed to do everything in its power to protect and create jobs. Yet Alex Salmond appears, on the evidence of the last few days, to be damned by the Scottish media if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

The taxpayer-funded BBC has a far more powerful influence in Scotland than News International, and is frequently portrayed by nationalists as the Union’s propaganda vehicle of choice. The allegations can sometimes be difficult to dispute however objective one would wish to be, and the BBC’s coverage of the Doosan furore last week was an instructive case.

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