Wings Over Scotland

Do you remember the Labour and media outrage a while back when SNP candidate Mhairi Black said she felt like “putting the nut” on some gloating Unionists at the indyref count, readers? Remember the pious scandal at such dreadful thuggery? (If you’d forgotten, don’t worry, because it’s in the Telegraph again today.)

Remember how the Daily Record and Scotsman have now been hammering away for a full week at another SNP candidate, Neil Hay, for tweeting a link to a satirical website and arguably being slightly rude about a small subset of pensioners, while glossing over a lengthy catalogue of abusive tweets calling the SNP “fascists” and “Nazis” (and more) from a prominent Labour activist and BBC pundit?

There’s your actual former First Minister and peer of the UK realm, Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale, setting the example Labour would have everyone follow today by celebrating a threat to “f*****g boot” any Tories in Wishaw (we’re not told whether the young ladies in question were Labour activists he was with or just Labour voters).

But there’s more.

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In the last 24 hours the Scottish and UK media has circled the wagons around the BBC’s James Cook, a good and balanced reporter who perhaps didn’t have his best day on Saturday. Predictable condemnation has poured in on “cybernats” alleged to have rained “vicious abuse” on the journalist in a co-ordinated fascist bullying attack etc etc, though as ever, actual quoted examples are in short supply.

(We’re aware of exactly two abusive tweets – one nutter identified by the Huffington Post calling the entire BBC “the scum of the Earth”), and one we ourselves saw and chided, which was then deleted by the normally-sensible user and which we honestly don’t remember the content of, beyond that it was unpleasant and excessive. It should go without saying that we deplore and condemn such abuse, while defending the right to civil, legitimate criticism of a public servant where justified.)

There’s nothing in the papers on this, though.

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We’ve known and documented for some time now that Scottish Labour’s attitude towards “foreigners” is, well, let’s be super-generous and say “ambiguous”. But this photo from nine days ago made even us take a sharp breath.

The woman on the left is the Labour MP for Aberdeen South, Dame Anne Begg. She received her DBE in 2011 “for services to disabled people and to equal opportunities”. But who’s her No-campaigning pal?

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Just a small sample.

“You were rumbled, you fucking traitors. Now shut up.”

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Today’s Daily Mail carries a dismal article under a hysterical essay of a headline reading “Homes vandalised, accused of stealing jobs and an atmosphere of discriminatory intimidation: The savage racism turning Scotland into a no-go zone for the English”. (It actually describes a couple of minor incidents, spread over several years, affecting a single elderly couple in Stirling, without a shred of evidence that they were in fact motivated by their Englishness.)

There are undoubtedly small pockets of anti-English racism to be found in parts of Scotland, like there are small pockets of every kind of racism and prejudice found in every country in the world. But why would any Scottish person ever be driven to feel animosity towards the English – our friends, our family and our neighbours?

Not just because of a few isolated nutters on Facebook, surely?

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I’d waited a long time for an official independence meeting to take place in my home town of Stonehaven, so when I read on Monday morning that Better Together (or No Thanks or SNPSNPSNPBOOO! or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) were holding just such a thing at the town hall that evening, I bounded along Allardice Street with all the enthusiasm I could muster.

Why had it taken until just five weeks before the vote to have such a meeting? I wasn’t sure. But since the Commonwealth Games I’d seen a rise in the amount of Yes signs, posters, car stickers and flags in the town. Maybe Better Together decided it was time to do something. Which side would take claim Stonehaven’s finest creation – the deep fried Mars bar – as their own?

Considering I only found out about it on the day, I thought there’d be hardly anyone there, but to my surprise the town hall was bulging with comfy chairs. Maybe two thirds were full. I felt like I was back at school as almost everybody refused to sit in the first couple of rows for fear of… well, it turned out most of these people were feart beyond belief already.

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We’re sure, right?

And it’ll be accompanied, we haven’t even the slightest shred of doubt, by a veritable procession of outraged columnists demanding that Alistair Darling must take personal responsibility for the actions of these people.

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We just caught a documentary on the BBC News channel presented by John Beattie and entitled “The Games People Play”, which seems to have been first aired on either Saturday or Tuesday (the BBC seems somewhat uncertain). Covering the link between sport and politics, for our money it’s one of the best things the state broadcaster has produced as part of its referendum programming, and we recommend it.

One rather depressing bit leapt out at us, though.

Sir Craig Reedie CBE, from Stirling, is former chairman of the British Olympic Committee and a current member of the International Olympic Committee. And when Beattie asked him about an independent Scotland’s entry into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, he gave an answer which readers may or may not find surprising, depending on their level of cynicism about “proud Scots”.

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Can be seen in today’s Scotsman – ironically in a comment located below a story headlined “Independence: Salmond pledges politics-free Games”.

Below it is a torrent of anti-SNP abuse, including the suggestion that Alex Salmond should be dropped out of a helicopter without a parachute. We’re sure, of course, that the No campaign will rush to condemn these remarks by another of Blair McDougall’s Brit Boys, and that the media – which scours the most obscure websites and Twitter accounts for comments to whip up a “cybernats” storm about – will have a double-page spread on it tomorrow.

At the weekend, hundreds of people (estimates of the actual number, as is traditional, varied wildly according to who was counting) protested against BBC bias at the state broadcaster’s Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow. There was a very great amount of sneering on social media among No campaigners and journalists at the peaceful, good-natured gathering, for such is the character of No campaigners and journalists.

A small group of readers of this site were among those who attended the protest. They were carrying a Wings Over Scotland banner, and some people had photographs taken with it, which naturally led to more sneering, such as this:

So far so unremarkable. That’s a jibe aimed at me rather than the wee kids in the pic, and I’m fair game. But then a gang of usual-suspects No types piled in on Labour and “Better Together” activist Hothersall’s tweet, and things got a little ugly.

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So, let’s just recap where we’ve got to.

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