Have We Entered the Realm of Thoughtcrime?

Baden-Powell Statue

The death in the USA of African American George Floyd at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin has seen a number of responses under the banner of “Black Lives Matter”.  Not least of these has been a renewed call to remove the statues of those involved in slavery, and/or the oppression of people of colour, and even other minorities.

Protests have spread worldwide, and one such event in Bristol, England, saw the statue of Edward Colston, an 18^th century slave owner, being torn from its plinth by protestors, dragged through the streets, and dumped in Bristol harbour.  The place where Colston’s statue was dispatched to the harbour was Pero’s Bridge; named after an 18^th century slave, Pero Jones, who was a well-known character in Bristol in his time.  Whether the protestors were aware of the significance of the bridge, or whether it was a complete coincidence remains unknown.

Since then protests in other parts of the UK have taken place, as have statues being sprayed with graffiti.  In one protest in London, a statue of Winston Churchill was so attacked.  However, bizarrely was the Cenotaph, which is the central war memorial for the entire UK.  One man also set light to a Union Flag atop the Cenotaph.  It is true that Winston Churchill was an odious character; a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite, and class elitist, who was responsible for a great number of deaths of unarmed and innocent people.  But the attack upon the statue of the man many see as the victor of the Second World War, allied with the attack upon the Cenotaph, and setting the Union Flag alight, certainly set a great many people against the BLM movement and protests.

Some cities, including London, have responded by stating that they will either remove statues, or where they cannot be removed, plaques explaining the unsavoury past of the characters they represent, which is to be applauded.  At the same time, the authorities claim to have a “hit list” or targeted statues, and one among those was the statue of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, on Brownsea Island, Poole, where the first Boy Scout camp took place.

The reasons for Baden-Powell’s statue apparently being targeted were things he wrote during his lifetime.  He was blatantly homophobic in his lifetime, admired Adolf Hitler, once advised people to read Mein Kampf, and allegedly was seeking to ally the English Boy Scout movement with the Hitlerjugend in Germany.

Of course, the Scouts never were allied with the Hitler Youth, and had Baden-Powell, who died in 1941, known the enormity of the brainwashing and brutality of that organisation, or indeed the enormity of the horrors of the Nazi regime, which few knew until 1945, then he may well have thought very differently.  As to his homophobia, well it is a well-known phenomena that those who speak out loudest against gays are usually closet cases themselves, and that is almost certainly the case with Robert Baden-Powell, whom many online biographies say was a closeted gay man.

I am not a big fan of Scouting myself, but then, I am not a parent, and I am well aware that many children get a great deal from it, none less than my two dear little great-nephews.  Likewise a friend of mine not only has a son who is very active in the Scouts, but she is very active with the organisation herself.  And I think this is an important point here.  The Scouts of today are no longer the regimented, Empire loyalist organisation they were when I was a boy, and kicked out of the cubs for refusing to swear allegiance to God and Queen, but rather they are a modern, all-inclusive club, which helps to hone children’s social skills, encourages them to achieve, and where all are welcome, including LGBT+ children.

Therefore, to attack a statue of Robert Baden-Powell to me seems a bit silly.  The man himself was never personally responsible for the death or oppression of anyone, but merely wrote some highly questionable opinions.  And this makes me wonder if some protestors are going too far, and have we entered the realm of Thoughtcrime?

There are many people in history who wrote and said many questionable things, but that does not for one moment detract from the great many other things they said, wrote, or did.  During one protest in Edinburgh, a cardboard placard was put around the neck of a statue of David Hume, alleging he was a racist.  Hume, the foremost empiricist and sceptical philosophers of all time, probably did hold views which would be considered racist by modern standards, but given he lived mostly in his native Edinburgh from 1711 to 1776, his experience of anyone of any colour different to his own would have been extremely limited.  Even today, with a population of only 5 million, Scotland simply does not have a large number of ethnic minorities, and in Hume’s day, seeing a black face on the streets of Edinburgh would have been something of a sensation.  Can we then condemn Hume for holding views that could be construed as racist by holding a 21^st century candle up to them?  And do these views somehow suddenly invalidate all the great things one of the fathers of modern philosophy did say and write?

When we try to apply our modern mores to characters of the past, we open up a whole can of worms.  And those on the political left may find that some of their heroes are likewise hardly blameless.

Edinburgh was also the birthplace of Marie Stopes, pioneer of family planning, after whom there are now clinics across the UK, and around the world, which offer family planning information and resources, including abortion.  Therefore, many would see Marie Stopes as a champion of women’s rights, and of a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body, which she indeed was.  Yet Stopes was also a strong believer in and campaigner for Eugenics, and in her 1920 book Radiant Motherhood, she wrote, "inborn incapacity which lies in the vast and ever increasing stock of degenerate, feeble-minded and unbalanced who are now in our midst and who devastate social customs. These populate most rapidly and tend proportionately to increase and these are like the parasite upon the healthy tree sapping its vitality"  Marie Stopes’ answer to this was "when Bills are passed to ensure the sterility of the hopelessly rotten and racially diseased, and to provide for the education of the child-bearing woman so that she spaces her children healthily, our race will rapidly quell the stream of the depraved, hopeless and wretched lives which are at present increasing in proportion in our midst"  So in other words, Marie Stopes believed in the enforced sterilisation, “by X-ray”, of women she deemed to be “degenerate, feeble-minded and unbalanced”. and referred to as a “prolific depravity”.

But let’s up the ante here.  Marie Stopes read Mein Kampf, and as a result started a correspondence with Adolf Hitler, sharing views on Eugenics and the “master race”, and even sent him poems.  This admittedly was however before the Nazis actually outlawed family planning, closed down clinics first in Germany and later across Europe, and even executed doctors who offered family planning, contraceptives, or abortions.

Do we then take down the blue plaque on Edinburgh’s High Street that marks the birthplace of Marie Stopes?  Do we rename all of the Marie Stopes International clinics?  Or do we recognise that she had some very mistaken ideas, but ultimately her 1918 work Married Love was a seminal moment, which recognised that women did indeed enjoy sex, that they could enjoy sex without the worry of falling pregnant, and that Marie Stopes International has helped and continues to help educating and empowering countless women about bodily autonomy?

Eugenics was a product of its time, and grew out of mistaken ideas from the findings of Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species.  People such as Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, and the economist Herbert Spencer, first man to coin the phrase, “Survival of the fittest”, misunderstood natural selection to mean that only the strongest survive; a belief that became known as Social Darwinism.  Galton particularly became the father of Eugenics, and it had many followers across the political spectrum.  Another firm adherent of Eugenics was George Bernard Shaw, who in 1910 at a lecture for the Eugenics Education Society stated, "A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them."  Likewise, Bertrand Russell in ICARUS, or the Future of Science, wrote "But probably, in time, opposition to the government will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations. The result will be to increase the average intelligence; in the long run, it may be greatly increased."  H.G. Wells, in the American Journal of Sociology (Vol 10, 1904), wrote, "It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."

Do we then take down the statues of George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells?   Do we discount all the great things they did write?  Should we indeed topple the Martian Tripod sculpture in Woking, which represents one of the alien spacecraft from War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells?

These things are never easy, and it may surprise many on the left to discover that many of their heroes are just as guilty of questionable comments as those considered to be heroes of the political right.  Even Karl Marx is not immune.  A rabid anti-Semite who in his 1844 pamphlet On the Jewish Question, wrote, "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist."  Marx also thought little of Mexicans, whom he considered lazy and feckless; “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?”

In 1977 the band The Stranglers released one of their most successful songs, No More Heroes.  Songwriter Hugh Cornwell later said of the meaning in the song, “Don’t have heroes.  Be your own hero.”  The message of this is that whatever heroes we have will ultimately let you down.  This is a truth as much as it is for the left as it is for the right.  In recent years Mohandas Gandhi has been exposed as an abusive husband.  John Lennon likewise horribly mistreated firstly Cynthia Powell, and later Yoko Ono.  Both of these may mar forever the memory of these men, but it does not for one moment discredit their nonviolent philosophy.  And just how happy would the left be with someone pulling down a statue of John Lennon or Mohandas Gandhi?

Removing statues and plaques, and renaming streets is by no means a new idea.  Back to Edinburgh, there was once a statue of the 16^th century leader of the Protestant Reformation, John Knox, outside the New College of Divinity.  If you’ve seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you will have seen actor Ian Charleston, playing Eric Liddel, saluting it as he runs past on his way to his studies.  Today it is no longer there, but can still be seen inside St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile.  The statue was removed due to the venomous anti-Catholic views and actions, and which still fuel the sectarianism that is the scourge and shame of Scotland to this day.  Yet ironically, Knox himself was once exiled from Scotland, which at one time saw him serve on a ship as a galley slave.

I am all for removing statues, plaques, and street names of those whose actions have directly led to the suffering and death of innocents, and I am not for one moment convinced that retaining them would make us forget history.  The absence of statues of Hitler in Germany does not mean we have forgotten the Nazis of World War II.  But where a statue cannot be removed, then there should be plaques put up to tell the whole truth about the individual involved.  But this must be the truth, thoroughly researched, and absolutely accurate.

But it needs more than this.  There needs to be a more holistic approach, whereby children in schools are taught the whole truth.   For the UK, this means teaching children the absolute truth about British imperialism, including its deficits, as well as its benefits.  Too long children have been taught that Britain built an empire upon which the sun never set, where the white man went out and educated and civilised the “ignorant savages”.  Likewise, it is way past time that schools in the USA started telling the truth about their slave-owning Founding Fathers, or indeed, the genocide and continuing mistreatment of Native American peoples, which no president, not even mixed-race Barack Obama, has ever properly addressed.

But the moment we start discounting the artistic works of people who have not personally hurt others, we go down a dangerous road indeed.  We need to recognise that some people were a product of their times, and shared the uninformed ideas of those times, which we cannot condemn in the 21^st century, and even where some views have been objectionable, that does not detract from their other works.

And as Hugh Cornwell said, perhaps we need to stop having heroes - and start being our own heroes.

No People are Beneath Dignity - Except the Scots

I'll make a confession here.  I like LBC host, and founder of the Quilliam Foundation, Maajid Nawaz. On many subjects he is one of the clearest commentators and best minds I have ever encountered.  I like his tenet, "No idea is beneath scrutiny, no people are beneath dignity."

But when it comes to Scotland and Scottish politics?  Dear, oh dear.  Maajid does not know the first thing he is talking about, and often falls into the trap of accepting everything he reads about the Scottish independence movement at face value, while not scrutinising the facts, and adding his own sensationalist and inaccurate claims to stoke the fire.

So it was when he published an article on Unherd, he fell into exactly the same trap as other London-based commentators who understand neither Scotland nor the Scots, and demand a right to reply.

"the coronavirus is putting strain on the UK, as it is on other federations like the United States and Belgium"

Watch that word, "federation".  It will become important later.

"Yet it cannot be right that the Scottish National Party should subject the good people of these Isles to yet another nationalist, divisive, separatist “little Scotlander” referendum"

The view of most supporters of independence has never been a divisive one, but rather one which seeks to live side by side with England, with neither country interfering in the affairs of the other.  The word "separatist" is a deliberate smear, and one which Maajid should realise was first used by the Tories against the SNP.  As to "little Scotlander", nothing could be further from the truth.  There is an English Scots for Independence group, a great many English living in Scotland support and even campaign for English independence, and a great many people in England actually support an independent Scotland.  Are all these English people then "little Scotlanders"?

"kicking off a new round of an entirely unsolvable political bun-fight that will tear our country apart even further."

Firstly, it is not unsolvable; independence is the key.  And it will not tear "our country" apart, because the United Kingdom is not a country, but rather a collection of countries.  It is in fact a political federation.

"We’ve had the “once in a generation” referendum and the nationalists lost."

The "once in a generation" comments from Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were their own personal opinions, nothing more.  There is nothing in legislation to set a time limit on any future referenda.  Besides which, the situation changed in 2016, when England voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, and Scotland voted almost completely as one voice to stay in the EU, but is now being dragged out of the EU against our will.  Perhaps Maajid would like to explain how, when we won that particular referendum, it is in any way democratic that we are being pulled out.

"Should the SNP succeed next May, Westminster — Parliament for all the United Kingdom — should simply refuse to authorise it."

And I say if Westminster does that, you will never see a faster road to independence.  If there is one thing that Scots cannot abide, it's being pushed around and told what to do.  Besides, while the Westminster parliament is indeed the UK parliament, Maajid is patently unaware that in Scotland sovereignty rests solely with the people.  Therefore, if the SNP are successful next May, that would be the sovereign voice of the people of Scotland, and any attempt to ignore that voice would indeed be an imperialist move.

"Despite being a Remain-voting liberal, my views on a second referendum have attracted the sort of racism — from Scottish nationalists — that you would usually expect to receive from the far-right. In many exchanges with SNP supporters, I have learned that that Left-wing racism against people of colour is apparently acceptable, if we veer off an approved script."

Maajid supplies links to comments on Twitter, many of which are racist, which he claims to have come from SNP and independence supporters.  Some are indeed racist, and some are not.  And not all of them come from the Indy camp.  In fact, a search of those making the comments did show some were Scots.  And some were in fact English.  And some of them showed no evidence of being independence supporters.  See for yourselves:

https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1183798073300008962

I'll be the first to admit that some of the statements were indeed odious, and indeed racist, such as "trading on his religion and colour of his skin", "two bob arab" and "Uncle Tom" - and these rightly deserve to be condemned.  However, one person commented "go back to your cave", which Maajid is painting as a racist slur towards him.  In fact, the person who made that comment was replying to another Twitter user who calls themselves CaptCaveManPete.  References to Maajid being a terrorist, while inaccurate, are not racist, but rather are comments upon his own past, which he freely admits, when he was an Islamist extremist.  One person complaining that Maajid "slanders Corbyn" is hardly likely to be an independence supporter, as Labour were a unionist party under Jeremy Corbyn, and remain unionist to this day.  And references to imperialism are not racist either; by asserting that Westminster should refuse Scotland another referendum, I would suggest that Maajid Nawaz has indeed shown himself to be an imperialist.

"But, then, as surprising as English liberals may find it, Scotland is not the progressive paradise they like to believe — and  my anecdotal experience is borne out by wider concerns. Last year more than 80 public and professional figures signed an open letter warning that the struggle against racism in Scotland is “rolling backwards”, creating a climate of “resentment towards frank discussion of race and racism” that is threatening to undo progress on race equality.

It is significant that the signatories also highlighted a trend to “silence the voices of people in Scotland who face colour-based racism”. This letter came less than two months after Scotland’s national poet laureate Jackie Kay warned openly  that Scotland had to “grow up” as it was “decades behind” in its treatment of black and ethnic minority people."

There are actually few thinking people in Scotland deny we have a racism problem.  In fact, many of us in Scotland, both within and outwith the independence movemnt, have warned that the claim that Scotland "isn't a racist country" is dangerous.  And it is important to state this exists outwith the independence movement as well.  Maajid Nawaz tries to paint this as an SNP / Independence problem, when nothing could be further from the truth.  We in the Indy movement are ever cautious about bigotry, be it racism, anti-English bigotry, sectarianism, homophobia, transphobia, or whatever it may be, and contrary to what Maajid Nawaz claims, we act upon it quickly.

Take the example during the 2014 referendum campaign, when openly-gay Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson came under attack from an anonymous Twitter user with a tirade of homophobic abuse.  Despite the fact that many of us in the Indy movement disliked the politics of Ruth Davidson, we identified that individual within 24 hours, had him thrown out of both Yes Scotland and the SNP, and shamed him into phoning Ruth to apologise.  The message then was clear; we in the Indy movement do not approve of playing the man, not the ball, and we will act quickly to shame and distance ourselves from anyone who displays bigotry.

"Too often, when minority voices such as mine — children of the colonies, born in Britain — oppose the break-up of what we now consider our country, Scottish nationalists too readily seek to silence our voices by accusing us, instead, of being English “colonists”."

But as I have illustrated above, very few actually do so, and there is no proof that all of those making those accusations are SNP / Indy supporters.  For Maajid to generalise the entire Indy movement by a tiny minority is sensationalism worthy only of gutter press red top newspapers.

"Such rhetoric is not only overly antagonistic, it also displays a fundamental ignorance about why most ethnic minorities in Britain have expressed a preference for calling ourselves British over English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish."

And that is Maajid's choice.  Just as it is the choice of any ethnic minority person.  But there are equally a number of BAME people in Scotland who will call themselves Scots first.  And interestingly enough, Jackie Kay, whom Maajid mentions above, is one of those.  But another important point here is that even if Scotland were independent, he could still call himself "British", for in the broadest of terms, we are all "British", just as we are all "European".  Herein lies another important point; despite the 2016 EU referendum, despite Brexit being triggered, I still call myself a European, I always shall do, and I am proud to be such.  No referendum shall ever strip me of my right to call myself such.

"And while I embrace being both a non-Anglo-Saxon Englishman and a Brit, it is not easy for many of us to forget the nationalist-inspired violent racism levied against us growing up, and still present today."

Here Maajid Nawaz tries to equate the passive, nonviolent movement for civic nationalism to the aggressive, often violent nationalism of the political extreme right.  Trying to paint any such parallels is an absurdity.  If Maajid were to do his homework, he would actually find that those on the racist, nationalist extreme right are actually unionists, deeply opposed to Scottish independence, and have in fact at times used violence against peaceful Indy supporters.  Ask the 80 year old man who was pushed to the ground while campaigning for Yes, breaking his arm.  Ask the Bikers for Yes, who had tin tacks thrown across their route.  Ask the homeless woman in Glasgow who was kicked in the stomach by a Better Together speaker, who had ties to the BNP - while she was pregnant.  Ask the elderly man in a Yes cafe near to my home who had a bottle thrown at his head.  There are many, many more such stories of violence from the unionist far-right, which make ignorant comments on social media from a minority of Indy supporters pale into insignificance.

"For ‘progressive’ Scottish Nationalists to draw an equivalence between ethnic minorities who oppose their separatism and British colonialism, smacks of the very colonial privilege they seek to denounce."

Well, for a start the important phrase Maajid Nawaz uses here is "British colonialism", for Scotland is not a colony of England, and never was.  Scotland and England entered into an all-encompassing union of two nations in 1707, which was supposed to be a union of equals.  However, when one nation is much larger than the other, that was never going to be equal.  And for Maajid to use that phrase highlights his own ignorance of history and the constitutional position of Scotland within the union.  But then, so does his assertion that Westminster should refuse the sovereign voice of the Scottish people.  Whether he likes it or not, Maajid Nawaz has indeed condemned himself as a UK establishment imperialist.

"The fact of the matter is that Scottish colonists profited greatly from the creation of the British Empire. Scotland’s debt to Empire is her dirty little secret, seldom acknowledged but ever-present. The “tobacco lords” of Glasgow were enriched by slavery in the Americas and Africa, while a quick visit to the former North British Rubber Company in Edinburgh serves to disabuse most naysayers suffering under such a false sense of righteousness."

Actually, those of us within (and outwith) the independence movement in Scotland are painfully aware of the part that Scots played in the building of the British Empire.  But note here that the history mentioned by Maajid has absolutely nothing to do with the call for independence, and never did.  When Glasgow was the shipbuilding centre of the world, it was known as "The second city of the Empire" (after London).  I sincerely doubt that the rich and the gentry who ran those businesses would have ever wanted an independent Scotland, as it would have meant their gravy train hitting the buffers.  So for Maajid to labour this history is absolutely pointless.

Plus, let's add where the Scots suffered under the British Empire.  Before the Battle of Quebec in 1759, General Wolfe rode up to the only Scots regiment there, and stated, "We'll send you in first.  If you fall, it's no great loss."  There are many would argue that in most cases of conflict, Whitehall ever since has adopted a "General Wolfe mentality"; sending the Scots into battle situations first.  This is why you find evidence of Scots regiments all around the former British Empire.

"The pernicious narrative peddled by Scottish nationalists that England colonised Scotland, and then the rest of the world — and so England must even now be resisted in Scotland — sounds suspiciously like an act of whitewashing Scottish culpability, at least to the ears of this descendant of a former colony."

Except that nobody in the independence movement has ever said such, and if they have, I invite Maajid Nawaz to supply the evidence for such.

"This is not something SNP supporters like to hear, but SNP supporters have gained a reputation for intimidating critics."

A reputation which has been overplayed by the London-based media, which has generalised us all on the actions of a tiny minority.

"Recently, BBC News Scotland Editor Sarah Smith learned the hard way why Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has earned the nickname “Nippie Sweetie” for adopting the  “aggressive and adversarial approach of male politicians” early on in her career."

Maajid Nawaz supplies a link to a column in The Scotsman here, and had he chosen to read it, he would have found Nicola Sturgeon explaining why she adopts such an attitude; it is because she is a woman in politics, and as such has had to adopt a strong line to make herself heard.  Is Maajid perchance suggesting that Nicola Sturgeon, as a woman, should be subdued and passive?  Sexist much?  Maajid?

"Ms Smith had made the admitted error of accidentally describing Sturgeon as  “enjoying the opportunity” to shine during lockdown, instead of saying that she was “embracing” the challenge. Ms Sturgeon’s supporters were not happy to say the least, and an online pile-on inevitably ensued. Ms Smith, though, was quick to push into reverse gear, her resultant climbdown being perhaps the swiftest and most complete of any journalist in recent years, to my mind. Scotland’s BBC chief was so remorseful, in fact, that she felt the need to issue no fewer than four swift back-to-back apologies online to Ms Sturgeon, with one of them remaining pinned to her profile page for days. Ms Sturgeon regally confirmed that she accepted her apology."

Actually, what we objected to was yet another BBC reporter using biased, innacurate language, when the BBC is supposed to be unbiased.  It was not at all helped by Sarah Smith changing her wording from "enjoying" to "embracing", as that was no apology at all.  Nicola Sturgeon herself said she neither "enjoyed" nor "embraced" reporting the deaths of people on a daily basis.  And contrary to what Maajid Nawaz is suggesting here, when Sarah Smith did apologise properly, it was then, the same day, that Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that she accepted the apology, and for her the matter was closed.  After that it was only a tiny number of hotheads who tried to keep it going, but it fizzled out within days.

"So wouldn’t it be lovely if Nicola Sturgeon also apologised for, and investigated, the racism present among all too many of her online supporting trolls?"

Actually, the SNP and the wider Indy movement do in fact often expose bigots, and Nicola Sturgeon and others in the SNP have stated, many times, that there is no room for it.  It is the London-based media, including Maajid Nawaz and LBC, who fail to highlight or publish that fact.

"While it is true that Ms Sturgeon is not personally responsible for the behaviour of her supporters, such racism appears not to be a mere bug for the SNP, but may well be a feature. Indeed, just because a nationalist party identifies as being on the Left, it does not mean that an undercurrent of racism cannot be found beneath all the cuddly talk."

Indeed.  And were it actually a serious undercurrent, which drove the movement, then I would be first to condemn it, and would even stand against it.  But this is not the case.

"Historically, many nationalist parties and nationalists have started on the Left, from the French Revolution onwards; indeed one of the most famous of 20th century nationalists, Benito Mussolini, was on the National Directorate for the Italian Socialist Party, before he turned rightward to fan the flames of nationalism."

Here Maajid Nawaz tries the old trick of trying to equate the political left with the far right, and you'll notice he again tries to condemn nationalism, and thereby equate civic nationalism with racist nationalism.  I have heard him do the same on LBC, pointing out that the Nazis were "National Socialist", and that Oswald Moseley left the Labour Party to form the British Union of Fascists.  It is a disingenious distinction, worthy only of those with a childish grasp of political theory, which is completely unworthy of comment.

"Violent hostility to outsiders and critics is in the DNA of nationalists, whether on the Left and Right, as anyone who has debated with SNP can testify to. When that outsider has different colour skin the rage seems to be heighted."

But that is not the case in civic nationalism, and to try to equate us with the very people who are violently opposed to us, extreme right nationalists, simply does not hold up to one moment's scrutiny.  It is a derisory attempt to smear us along with the far right as "all nationalists are the same".  Would Maajid not agree that one of the biggest causes of bigotry is making sweeping generalisations - as Maajid has just done here?

"As party leader, it is Nicola Sturgeon’s duty — not mine — to make minorities feel safe from the racism of too many of her supporters. And until she can do so, do not be fooled by the progressive overtures of this SNP. For too long commentators of all persuasions have harboured a policy and ethical blindspot for Scotland’s nationalists, viewing them as polar opposites to English nationalists, rather than their counterparts."

There is a dictum which I embrace in my life, and that is that the burden of proof lies upon the claimant.  Maajid Nawaz has made claims here that minorities are not safe in the SNP, or by extension Scotland, and that we in the Indy movement are no different from extreme-right English nationalists.  Yet he offers absolutely not one shred of evidence to back up those claims.  And no, I don't mean a few hand-picked Tweets, not all of which came from Scots Nats, not all of which were racist, and not all of which in fact came from Scots.

"We should beware the kid gloves with which metropolitan opinion formers treat the SNP. Their party machine is curiously similar to Momentum, and much of what we would never tolerate from Corbyn now rules in Edinburgh. As such, they are riddled with all the trappings of power, while harbouring a nasty, illiberal and authoritarian streak."

I live in Edinburgh.  Essex boy Maajid Nawaz does not. The SNP are nothing like Momentum, and they are neither illiberal nor authoritarian.  The fact is the only reason that the SNP have been in power in the Scottish Parliament since 2007 is because the people of Scotland have voted consistently for them.  Just as out of the 59 MPs Scotland sends to Westminster, 47 of them are SNP, and of the six Scottish MEPs, 3 of them are SNP - because the Scottish people voted for them, which is their sovereign right to do so.  It's not Nicola Sturgeon's fault, not mine, and not through "a nasty, illiberal and authoritarian streak" that Maajid's party, the Lib-Dems, was beaten into fifth place, behind the Scottish Greens, at the last Scottish Parliamentary election.

"Alarm bells should be ringing now, lest after lockdown we enter blindly into yet another experience like the three years before the virus struck.

And if you thought Brexit Britain got bad, just wait until Scexit."

Except that Brexit was deliberately planned to create discord between people by Brexit supporters, and did indeed create a lot of ill feeling - even among families.  The 2014 independence referendum did not create the same sort of division, no matter what the London media would have you believe.  I have friends and even family members who are unionists, and the fact that we have differing political viewpionts does not stop me loving them any less.  In fact, if anything there is a much greater acceptance and tolerance of differing viewpoints here in Scotland.

And if Maajid Nawaz lived in Scotland, rather than bumping his gums from his home in London, he would know that, and a great deal more about things he patently had no idea of which he is talking about.

No people are beneath dignity, Maajid - including the people of Scotland.

Link to Maajid's article below:

https://unherd.com/2020/05/the-racism-lurking-behind-scottish-nationalism/

Transphobic Stickers ARE a Serious Crime

"IT'S POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD!"

Except, as ever, it's not.

Oxford, England, is being plagued by people leaving transphobic stickers all over the city. The police response has been to consider it a "serious" crime, and the reaction to that from the right - oh, and of course, the transphobes (usually but not always the same people) - has been predictable.

Some are questioning why it is being treated as a serious crime.  Well, it is. Because it starts with hateful messages on stickers, and it ends with people suffering prejudice, and their very identity being denied. 

Some of the stickers use of the dictionary definition of women;  “Woman: noun. Adult human female".

The use of this trope by transphobes is becoming increasingly common, to the point some are claiming it is the "scientific" definition, which of course it is nothing of the sort.  And actually, using dictionary definitions of common English are seldom useful in extremely nuanced and complicated issues.

For example, let's see the dictionary definition of a Scot:

"Scot: noun. A native or inhabitant of Scotland."

Now, that definition, if taken purely, would mean that only those native to or living in Scotland are Scots. Well, I have many online friends all over the world who come from Scots descent, and do consider themselves to be Scots. And likewise, I recognise their identity as such. By equal measure, not all inhabitants of Scotland are Scots, and some do not wish to be identified as such.

See how silly relying upon dictionary definitions of common English can be?

Saying that a woman is always an "adult human female", is about as useful as Baldrick's definition of a dog in Blackadder the Third: "Not a cat."

But if the transphobes really want to  insist that a woman is an “Adult human female”, then fair enough, let them have that.  For after all, that indeed is what all women are – including transgender women.

And this is where the transphobes throw in their other claims, which have been seen on some stickers in Oxford, including “Transwomen are men, and most have penises”, and “Women don’t have penises”.

Except of course, some women do indeed have penises – and / or testes; they are born with them.  Just as some boys are born with ‘female’ genito-urinary tracts and/or wombs, and a small proportion are born with the genitals of both sexes.  Some babies are born with XX chromosomes, some are born with XY – and some are born XXY, some born XYY, some born with any variation of the above.  If the transphobes want to use the dictionary definition of women as the only viable description, then they must deny the very existence of intersex people.

These transphobes are the people who claim to have science on their side, folks.

The facts are that they do not have one iota of science upon their side.  Decades of reams upon reams of peer-reviewed scientific research have confirmed gender diversity and gender dysphoria to be 100% factual.  Frankly, if anyone wants to deny the existence of transgender and non-binary – as well as intersex – people, then they may as well go and join the young earth creationists, the evolution deniers, the climate change deniers, the anti-vaxxers, and the fucking flat earthers, because they are demonstrating exactly the same level of scientific ignorance.

And worse still, they get others believing them.  Most of the public do not understand the nuances of gender, or how a woman can indeed have a penis, or for that matter that a man can have a vagina.  I have heard one radio show host trying to argue that the stickers are just “telling the truth”.

Except they do anything but tell the truth.  The stickers try to equate biological sex with gender, which are not one and the same thing.   We all start essentially female in the womb – which is why men have nipples (and some can actually lactate).  Then in the first few weeks, the genitalia forms to either ‘male’ or ‘female’ in most cases – see above about variations.  The genitalia we are born with determines biological sex.  It does not however determine gender, which is decided in the mind.  To use a much used saying, “Sex occurs between the legs.  Gender occurs between the ears.”

But does it matter so much for these stickers to be considered a serious crime?

Well, consider this; these stickers seek to deny the very existence of transgender and non-binary people.

If someone put up stickers calling Jews subhuman, that would be a serious crime.  If anyone put up stickers calling black people animals, that would be a serious crime.

So, likewise, when someone equally denies the existence of transgender and non-binary people, that too is a serious crime, and Oxford police are right to treat it as such.

It starts with stickers.  It ends with a transgender woman being targeted and killed.  And the police are only doing the right thing in nipping that in the bud.

In Abandoning The Kurds Trump Has Betrayed All Of Us

Kurds fleeing Turkish attack

The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw US troops from Kurdistan, north-east Syria, has to be one of the biggest, and most foolish, acts of betrayal in recent history, which had immediate results, in the form of attacks from Turkey.  But the rhetoric of the President has to be called into question.

President Trump insisted that it was the US, and the US alone, who crushed ISIS in Syria.  In fact it was the Kurds who liberated tens of thousands of square miles from ISIS, costing the lives of 11,000 Kurdish men, women, and children, to create the “safe zone”.  The agreement for doing this was that US forces would patrol the area to create a buffer zone, to prevent Turkish attack and/or invasion.

Similarly, the President claimed that the US helped the Kurds by arming them.  Indeed they did.  And the Kurds surrendered those US weapons, to prevent them from falling into the hands of ISIS insurgents.

So now there is no longer a buffer zone, and the Kurds stand unprotected, and unarmed, between Turkish attacks in the north, and a resurgent ISIS in the south, as well as the anti-Kurdish forces of Syria’s President Assad.  Alongside this, the Kurds are holding approximately 11,000 ISIS militants in makeshift prisons.  That the Kurdish forces are now concentrated upon fighting the Turks on the northern border, guarding these ramshackle prisons is no longer their highest priority, and there is every likelihood that the prisoners could escape, carry out acts of terror, and gather other followers.

It does not look good for the Kurds, whom the US president has effectively condemned to potentially being wiped out completely; something that Turkey, Syria, and Iraq has always sought.  I do not think I am being alarmist when I say that there is every possibility of the ethnic cleansing of Kurds in the near future.  Saddam Hussein attempted it, and both the Syrians and the Turks see them as an ‘underclass’.  And wherever that sort of mindset is found, ethnic cleansing does not follow far behind.

But in his childlike way, the President of the United States first pretended to condemn the Turkish attacks as a “bad idea”, and then he tried to justify pulling troops out by saying “They didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy … but they’re there to help us with their land.”  

Indeed, I would be the first to admit that (to the best of my knowledge) there were no Kurds at the Normandy landings.  As to the rest however, it appears, not for the first time, that the (allegedly) most powerful man in the world needs a history lesson.

In 1941 there was a coup in Iraq, in which the nationalist Arab, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, overthrew the pro-British Regent 'Abd al-Ilah and his Prime Minister Nuri al-Said.  This coup, by a very pro-Nazi group known as the Golden Square, was only made possible by intelligence and military assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  The coup lasted little over a month, and was put down by local forces fighting for the British; notably the Iraq Levies, who were made up of Kurdish, Assyrian, Marsh Arab, and Baluchi forces.

The Iraq Levies were under the command of the UK’s Royal Marine Commando, and served in Palestine, Albania, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy.  By 1944 they were renamed the Royal Air Force Levies.

Therefore, while there may not have been any Kurds on the beaches at Normandy, they most certainly did serve in the Second World War, and prevented the Nazis from gaining a foothold in the Middle East.

And what were the Trump family doing at this time?  Well, Fred Trump, the father of the President, had never been conscripted, but was busy supplying US Navy dockyards with barracks, which he subsequently was investigated for profiteering from.   As to what the rest of the Drump family in Bavaria, a Nazi heartland, were likely to have been doing at the time is anyone’s guess.

It is interesting to note that Freidrich Trump, the President’s grandfather, decided to emigrate to the USA just before he reached the age of conscription into the Bavarian Army.

Donald of course was not even born at this time.  However, the President avoided being drafted into military service on no fewer than five occasions, it is allegedly claimed due to “bone spurs”; projections from bones, usually along the spine.  Bone spurs are mostly found in people over 60, although they can occur in younger adults, is a progressive condition, can be painful, and can restrict movement.  Therefore, far be it from me to question anyone’s claims of ill health, far less that of the ‘leader of the free world’, but if Donald Trump has had bone spurs since his teens, at 73 years old now, and being able to move about freely, and even visit several countries, he’s doing damned well on it.

The upshot of all this is that I do not think the Kurds, I, you, or the dog next door need any lessons on fighting for freedom not only from a draft dodger, but one to be the third generation of his family to follow in that ignominious tradition.

If the insensitivity, the inaccuracies, the dismissive manner, the false accusations, the childishness, and the sheer utter stupidity of Donald Trump attempting to justify pulling out of northern Syria were not shocking enough, then his reaction to the possibility of ISIS insurgents escaping capture from Kurdish prisons knows no bounds.  Answering a question on such at a press conference, the President replied, "Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe. That's where they want to go, they want to go back to their homes."

Indeed, some of the escapees may make their way into Europe – which in some cases they came from, but not all cases.  And as a European, I find it deeply disturbing that the President of the United States can be so crassly dismissive about the possibility of ISIS insurgents on the streets of European cities.  Of course, in his reply, Trump was meaning Germany and France. "They didn't come from our country and we did them a big favour," Trump said at the press conference. "We said to France, we said to Germany, we said to various countries in Europe, 'we'd like you to take your people.'  I said, 'we don't want them either.'  Nobody wants them. They're bad. But somebody has to watch over them.”  And some may go to France.  And some may go to Germany.  And some may go to London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff…  And wherever they go, they will be intent on killing as many people as possible.  But that’s okay, apparently.  We can live with a terrorist threat on our doorstep, so long as the USA doesn’t have to.

And just how would these insurgents enter Europe?  Through the nearest door possible, and that of course is – Turkey, which bridges Europe and Asia.  It is the easiest, most logical direction to go to enter Europe, and given that the Turkey’s President Erdogan, who is systematically destroying the secular country the great Kemal Ataturk built, is no slouch himself in the stakes of Islamic fundamentalism, that would make ISIS insurgents heading in that direction all the more likely.

But it is not only ISIS insurgents we have to worry about.  There are already refugees pouring out of Syria, and not a few of them are Kurds.  With the US withdrawal, that refugee problem can only become greatly exacerbated.  We can expect to see many, many more Syrians fleeing into Europe - and oh, into the USA as well - where these poor people, fleeing things you and I do not even wish to imagine, will be welcomed by some lesser educated people with fear, hate, prejudice, and violence.

And if ISIS does become resurgent, which is a distinct possibility with the withdrawal from Syria, how does the President respond to that?  "We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!" Trump posted on Tweet.

Really, Mr President?  And with just whose help are you going to ‘crush’ a resurgent ISIS?  Who now is going to ever trust the USA again after this infamous act of betrayal?  Certainly not the Kurds.  And given the way that the President has dismissed the possibility of thousands of ISIS terrorists threatening European cities, while insulting Germany and France in the process, and having exacerbated the Syrian refugee crisis, why should European countries trust the USA either? 

The fact is that in pulling out of Syria, not only has Donald Trump thrown the Kurds under the bus, he has thrown Europe under the bus.  Hell, if escaped ISIS insurgents enter Turkey, they could easily carry out attacks there.  So he’s even thrown the Turks under the bus.  And of course, in the guise of exacerbating the Syrian / Kurdish refugee crisis, some of whom may seek refuge in the USA, and leading to a situation where US forces might not be trusted again, he has potentially even thrown his own country under the bus.

The truth is, Donald Trump has thrown us all under the bus.

May Day, VE Day - or Both?

Trafalgar Square, London, 8 May 1945

Should Scotland join in with the 2020 May Bank Holiday?

The May Bank Holiday for 2020 is to be moved to Friday, 8 May, to coincide with the 75^th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of World War II in Europe, which was officially marked as 8 May 1945.  The Friday holiday shall mark a weekend of celebrations, but in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland only.  The question is should Scotland similarly move the holiday to 8 May?

There are a few sides to this, and do excuse me if I view this move with a certain amount of cynicism.

Holidays on or around the 1 May have long been associated with International Worker’s Day, which was instituted by the 1904 Sixth Conference of the Second International, for all workers to recognise 1 May as a day for workers.  It is due to this that the political right, particularly among pro-capitalist interests, have often sought to take the May Bank Holiday away from people, seeing it as a socialist or communist holiday.  Indeed, there are modern socialists connotations to ‘May Day’, but the facts surrounding it are much more convoluted, and go back much further than socialism and / or any workers movement was ever thought of.

So let’s look at the history.  For a start, International Worker’s Day, which was always meant to be 1 May, no matter which day that fell upon, does not even reflect the history behind it.  The Second International chose 1 May as the closest day to the 1886 Haymarket Event.  Striking workers and their supporters in Chicago’s Haymarket were holding a peaceful protest, but were surrounded by police.  At some point an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb into the police ranks, and the police responded by opening fire upon the crowds.  The result was 4 deaths among the public, and 7 police deaths.  However, this occurred upon 4 May 1886, not 1 May.

Traditional May holidays go back much, much further, and their origins are in fact lost in the mists of time.  May Day was Beltane, the welcoming of summer in the Celtic calendar, which was reserved for the blessing of beasts and marked with fertility rituals.   This is where we get the Maypole from; far from being an innocent and charming dance of girls with garlands around it, the Maypole is in fact a symbolic phallus, which virgin girls would originally ‘bless’ by dancing around it naked.  The night before Beltane, 30 April, would be marked with celebrations of fire festivals across Scotland, Ireland, and parts of England and Wales.  Tarbolton, in Ayrshire, Scotland, takes its name from “Tor Beltane”, and this remembers the time when cattle were driven between two blazing pyres on Hood’s Hill.  The pyres marking the coming of summer were traditionally lit at the stroke of midnight.  This was usually followed by a great deal of cavorting and drinking, which of course would have left no one in any fit state to work on 1 May.  So it was that 1 May came to be the chosen day for local communities to hold their local fairs or galas, and as time went on, the personage of the Summer Queen, who would light the pyres on Beltane, evolved into the May Queen, where a young girl from each community was chosen to be queen for a year.  This choice of 1 May for galas was especially strong among mining communities, who chose it as their day.  So again, we see that long before socialist labour movements, May Day was already established as a worker’s holiday, and this inevitably led to the first backlashes from capitalist interests to crush it.

In more modern times, Conservative governments in the UK have continually tried to put down May Day, but with little success.  The closest that they have got is to agree that the first Monday in May be a Bank Holiday.  But even this they have done grudgingly.

Besides this history, we however have to consider the importance of VE Day, which is indeed important, and cannot and must not be ignored.  The final defeat of the Nazi scourge across Europe was a massive event not just in UK history, not just in European history, but also in world history.  70 to 85 million people died in World War II in Europe, including of course approximately 16 million who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust, not to mention those who killed where they stood purely because they did not match the hateful ideology of Nazi purity.  Axis forces actually got as far as the Channel Islands, and the UK should and must always remember just how close we came to invasion and defeat.  There are many alive today, myself included owe not just their freedom, but also their very existence to the victory of the Allied forces.  And of course, it was also important for Germany, to free them from the tyranny they had suffered too long.  The importance of VE Day simply cannot be underestimated.

Yet against this, I still have my reservations.  Admittedly I am a pacifist and anti-militarist, so I have to admit not being at all fond of demonstrations of militarism, jingoism, hyper-patriotism, and people playing ‘patriotic one-upmanship’, of trying to show how they are more loyal (and supposedly then better) than the next person.  All that makes me sick to the very pit of my stomach.

In the UK we already have a number of days when past wars are remembered, and are usually marked with such demonstrations; be they Trafalgar Day, Remembrance Day, or Armed Forces Day.  The latter of these actually started out by the wives and families of serving or veteran men and women in the UK armed forces.  However it has since become hijacked by politicians for their own nefarious purposes.  Just one example was Armed Forces Day 2014, which took place in Stirling – just one week after the 700^th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn took place in the same city.  This was also of course the same year that the independence on Scottish Independence would take place, and while others may not see it this way, the message to me was all too clear, as to who was in charge, and they were not willing to listen to any other viewpoint.  At the least, placing Armed Forces Day in Stirling in 2014 was a propagandist move by the Westminster government in my opinion.  And that is actually disgusting; for far from respecting the armed forces and remembering war dead, it was an underhand political move.

I also question other motives behind military parades.  How can we point the finger at regimes like China and North Korea for displays of military might, surrounded by unquestioning, flag-waving patriots, when we actually do exactly the same in the UK?  And then of course, there are the politicians who are always quick to jump in and hijack such displays for personal and / or political motives.  I speak here of course about the politicians who make sanctimonious speeches about ‘gallant sacrifice’ – and then return to their jobs where they starve the armed forces of the resources they need, strip veterans of benefits, and completely ignore the many veterans sleeping on the streets.  They hypocrisy of such makes my blood boil. Take note, serving men and women and veterans; my argument is not with you, but with the bastards who send you to war, only to dump you on the scrap heap afterwards.

I am also turned off military commemorations by some of the people they attract, who are only too willing to use them for their own reasons; I refer of course to those on the extreme right of politics.  Go and look at any far right social media page, and you will find it festooned with poppies, Union Flags, and messages stating that those who fell did so for “our way of life”.  The sickening part of course being that those who fought in World War II did so to make the world safe from precisely their sort of twisted ideology.  But then, when you see pictures of the followers of such standing in front of a war memorial, holding a Union Flag (usually upside-down) – wearing Nazi regalia, and making Nazi salutes.  Such people, who must be sharing their family brain cells, do anything but honour the fallen and remember the importance of freeing Europe from the Nazi scourge; they completely dishonour both, and they do so to push their own neo-Nazi ideology.  If there are earth tremors every 8 May, it is millions of WWII dead whirling violently in their graves.

So, should Scotland follow suit with having the 2020 May Bank Holiday on 8 May, to tie in with VE Day?  I don’t honestly know.  I can see both sides of it, and far be it from me to ever dishonour those to whom I owe thanks for being born.  Yet as far as I can see, today’s Tory government have achieved what Margaret Thatcher failed to do; taking May Day away from ordinary working people, as their one day in the year to celebrate their commonality.  And in doing so, I already foresee a load of militaristic, jingoistic guff about something which should always be remembered, but never celebrated, as there are no winners in any war – only losers.  And one that will, as usual be hijacked by politicians and the extreme right for their own personal and propaganda purposes.

There is of course, another answer; the Friday before May Day 2020 falls upon 1 May.  I see absolutely no reason why we cannot have two consecutive May holidays.

When Will Unionists Take Ownership of Their Behaviour?

Unionist snatching flags

Does someone have to die before anyone takes notice?

An All Under One Banner (AUOB) march for Scottish Independence took place in the Borders town of Galashiels on Saturday, 1 June 2019.  Sadly, I could not be there, but the marchers were blessed with a sunny day, and there was apparent good cheer as approximately 5000 people took part.

But the day was almost seriously marred by the actions of a few unionists, including one incident that could very easily have ended in a serious, possibly even fatal accident.

As the Yes Bikers, a motorcycle group of independence supporters, approached Galashiels, they encountered a line of screws deliberately laid out across the road, on the A68 near Earlston.  Some of the bikes suffered punctures, but the bikers, some of whom were carrying children, managed to get through.  Only one bike was stopped.

This follows on from incidents in at the Glasgow AUOB March in Glasgow in May, where Yes Bikers had traffic cones and other objects thrown at them, and one person standing in the middle of the road was trying to snatch flags from the backs of bikes, which could have resulted in bikes being toppled, or the man responsible being injured in a collision.  Another unionist stood in traffic, removed his trousers and underpants, and slapped his buttocks towards the bikers.  Thankfully, both these individuals were arrested.

While the mainstream media is quick to jump on and sensationalise minor wrongdoings by a tiny minority within the Independence movement, such as alleged abusive comments on social media by “cybernats” (many of which are not actually abusive), there is a violent element within the unionist camp which is rarely reported, if it does warrants a small column inside a newspaper and has never been front page news, and which the unionist camp never seem to condemn nor take ownership for.

Incidents by unionists since 2014 have included;

• An 80-year-old Yes supporter knocked to the ground, breaking his arm, by a woman who was a member of both the Labour Party and Better Together.
• A 5-year-old boy narrowly missed when a unionist pushed a chair out of an upper storey window, aiming to hit a Yes stall, and former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars.
• A pregnant homeless woman kicked in the stomach by a Better Together speaker, who had links to the extreme-right British National Party.
• A Yes stallholder headbutted by one man, while two other men overturned his stall.
• Yes/SNP campaigners being verbally abused, threatened, and even spat upon – myself included – in public.
• Several Yes cafes and hubs being vandalised, some with their stock destroyed.
• Excrement smeared on the door handles of Penicuik Yes Café.
• Peaceful independence supporters, despite being defeated in the 2014 referendum, being beaten up by gangs of unionist thugs in Glasgow’s George Square.
• Cars with Yes / SNP stickers being keyed, and / or their windows smashed.
• Houses displaying Yes / SNP stickers or logos, or flying the Saltire, having them vandalised, and in some cases their windows broken.
• An elderly man in Edinburgh South Yes Hub recently having a bottle of water thrown at him; not over him, the actual plastic bottle was deliberately aimed at his head.

 In every single one of these incidents, nobody from any of the unionist organisations, and no high-profile individuals within the unionist movement have spoken out to condemn them.  Quite the opposite, whenever they have happened there have been unionists congratulating the perpetrators, and some saying they wish it had been worse.

I am not saying for one moment that everybody in the independence movement is an angel.  Far from it, every political movement has its hotheads and dangerous elements.  The big difference is that whenever anyone in the independence movement has done something really wrong, the vast majority of us have condemned their actions, and they very quickly find themselves ostracised by most within the movement.  This is precisely what happened when Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson was subjected to a tirade of homophobic abuse by one individual using a false name on Twitter.  Within 24 hours the said individual had his identity made public, was suspended from Yes Scotland and the SNP, and was shamed into phoning Ruth Davidson to apologise.  Ruth later Tweeted “I feel I have been treated with chivalry.”  She is welcome.  No one in this movement believes in playing the man and no’ the ball.

But there are unionists who persist in abusive and increasingly violent actions, and nothing is said or done about that.

I am not for one moment castigating all unionists as violent and abusive.  I happen to know for a fact that the vast majority are not, but most are capable of reasoned debate, or who at the least will walk away from the argument.  But at the same time, the unionist movement are not taking ownership of those within their movement who are now presenting a danger to life and limb.

And notice my language here; “taking ownership”.  For make no mistake about it, unionists, you own these actions, and by ignoring them, or claiming it’s nothing to do with you, you merely bring dishonour to your own movement.  At the worst, you are risking a serious incident where someone could be seriously hurt, or even killed.

What will it take for you to take responsibility, unionists?  A death?

In the spirit of democratic and reasoned political debate, I sincerely hope not.

Where Is The Love?

Not at all homophobic you understand?

Anderton Park Primary School, LGBTI-inclusive education, and Eshter McVey

Amidst ongoing protests at Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham, England, former cabinet minister and current contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and thereby future Prime Minister, Esther McVey, has thrown her support behind those protesting against LGBTI-inclusive education at the school.

“I believe parents know best for their children and whilst they are still children then really parents need to have the final say in what they want their children to know,” says McVey,  “People shouldn't be protesting outside of primary schools. That's young children going into school there. Everyone has to be a bit more adult, a little bit more grown up in what they do outside a primary school.  I'm being very clear. The final say is with the parents and if parents want to take their young children out of primary school, out of certain forms or sex education, relationship education that is down to them.”

Despite her fine words that people should not be protesting outside schools, Esther McVey could not be more wrong, and has effectively thrown the head teacher and staff at the school, as well as parents with no problem with the lessons, under a bus.

First the background.  Anderton Park School is a primary school in Birmingham, England, which has introduced LGBTI-inclusive education into their curriculum, as has been sanctioned by the UK government.  The form it took was an award-winning programme called No Outsiders, formed by local teacher Andrew Moffat.    The No Outsiders programme teaches the realities of LGBTI+ people at age-appropriate level, without any mention of sexual activities.  It merely teaches that LGBT+ people exist, that some children have two fathers or two mothers, that some men like men, some women like women, and that some people identify with a gender which differs from their biological sex.  The aim of No Outsiders, like all LGBTI-inclusive education, is to teach respect and acceptance of others, and thereby reduce the incidence of homophobic and transphobic discrimination, harassment, and bullying.  This is particularly important to children who may identify as LGBTI, in that it aims to foster acceptance from their peers, reduce prejudice and bullying, and teach those children that it is perfectly normal and natural to be who they are, and to own their identity with pride.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  And great it would be, were it not for homophobia, transphobia, disinformation, and propaganda to raise their ugly heads.  The school happens to be in a largely Muslim community, and many children attending the school come from Muslim families.  No sooner had the No Outsiders programme started than there were a small group of Muslims objecting to it.  This formed a protest outside the school gates, which has since snowballed.  The protestors are objecting to children being taught about same-sex relationships, transgender people, and “gay sex”.  The protests started with a small group of parents, but since then others have become involved.  The self-appointed leader of the protests, Shakeel Asfar, does not even have children at the school, but is an uncle to two children attending.  The increasing protest has started to involve others who do not have children at the school, and even those who are not parents at all.  Numbers have increased as other anti-LGBT Muslims, Christians, and even extreme right-wingers – who otherwise are prejudiced towards Asians and Muslims – have joined in.  There are also now signs of the protest spreading to other schools in England.

Were their objections to harmless LGBTI-inclusive education not enough, some of these protestors have started spreading lies and propaganda about the No Outsiders programme.  Protestors are claiming that the programme teaches about gay sex, it does not, that is sexualises children, and worst of all that it is teaching paedophilia.  Abdullah Bahm, an Islamic preacher from Batley, Yorkshire – not even with no relationship to the school, but from a completely different county in England – shouting through a PA system at the protest, held up images including a near-naked couple, which he falsely claimed came from No Outsiders literature, and proclaimed “There are paedophiles in there. There are paedophiles in there.” and claimed that to teach equality is to teach a “paedophile agenda”.

A Christian preacher from Bournemouth – hundreds of miles from Birmingham, again, in another county -  following Mr Bahm, then took the microphone, insisted that teaching about “gay equality” was confusing children, and related an anecdote (which almost certainly never happened) of a little girl being afraid to pick up a friend who had fallen, “in case she was called a lesbian”.  He then went on to rattle off a number of alleged statistics about gay relationships and sexually transmitted diseases – which of course are completely irrelevant to LGBTI-inclusive education.

There are parents who have no problem with their children being taught about equality, and some who have bravely spoken out about it.  However, when these said parents attempt to take their children to school, they are being confronted by protestors, usually outside the school but some have reported being accosted streets away, and being told “If you send your children to that school, you are not a Muslim, and you will burn in Hell.”  Parents, with little children, are constantly jeered as they go into the school.  Teachers at the school, including the head teacher, have been verbally abused, jostled, threatened, and have even received death threats.  The head teacher, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, described in an interview on LBC Radio, how even in what are supposed to be discussions with the protestors, hardliners have shut down debate by shouting over her and other staff any time they attempted to talk.  There is one reported instance of one man slamming his fist down on a desk and declaring that he was a general in the Kashmiri Liberation Army.  The aforementioned Mr Asfar has no intention of speaking civilly with Ms Hewit-Clarkson, whom he wants to resign, but instead in a speech denouncing her, and in which he threw in completely off-topic various ‘atrocities’ committed upon Muslims around the world, insinuated that she was probably having a sexual relationship with a “biased” female journalist.  Not that it should matter, but the sexuality of Ms Hewit-Clarkson is not known.

Worse still was to come.  A counter-protest of pro-LGBT people, who had gained permission from the school, arrived on the evening of 19 May, and started hanging rainbow flags, pom-poms, and messages of pro-LGBT support on the school railings.  The counter protest had non-violent intentions, and even arrived with cupcakes to hand out and share with the protestors, whom they hoped to have a reasoned discourse with.  Instead, as they were hanging their messages, they were pelted with eggs, shouted and screamed at, cars full of men turned up and told them to “get out of our community”.   But even when they did try to leave, some of the protestors, all women, found their way blocked by a large group of men.  Due to a distraction, they managed to escape.  By the morning, nearly all of the messages had been torn down.

Shakeel Asfar blamed the counter-protestors for the confrontation.  He claimed that the flags and messages were “inflammatory”, and accused the group of provoking residents were about to mark Ikfar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast.   It is not at all lost on me that Mr Asfar is attempting to turn this issue into a wider “Islamophobia” one, when that is patently not the case.

Even at the lower end, there are protestors objecting to what is being taught, chanting “Our children, our choice”, and maintaining it is ‘their’ school.  Yes, it is, but only up to a point.  And this is where Esther McVey is wrong to support them.

Yes, it is their school; every school is part of the community it serves, and parents should indeed be able and even be encouraged to interact with the school, for the benefits of their children.  However, it is not their curriculum and when a curriculum, or part thereof, is accepted by that school, by the local authority, and by central government, that is where the individual input of parents has to end, for the greater interests of all children at that school.  If that were not the case, then every school would have their hands tied, and not be able to teach anything, because of objections from individual parents.  Besides which, there are now a number taking part in this protests who do not have children at that school, some who have come hundreds of miles to protest a school they probably never heard of until this year, and some of whom do not even have children at all.  It is not Shakeel’s Asfar School, far less some Islamic preacher from Bradford, or a Christian preacher from Bournemouth.

If some parents are unhappy with the No Outsiders programme, then they have the freedom to remove their children from the school, which sadly, some have done.  However, when they attempt to prevent the teaching of the programme altogether, spreading lies, disinformation and propaganda, are trying to enforce the resignation of the head teacher, are harassing, bullying, jostling, and threatening staff and other parents, scaring their children while doing so, when they send death threats to staff, when a non-violent group of women with the best intentions are intimidated and threatened by a gang of men, and when they are pelted with eggs, it becomes a different matter.  

This again is where Esther McVey is wrong.  Do parents really know what is best for their children, in every case?  I sincerely doubt it.  To quote an auld Scots saying, “Bairns and fuils speak at the cross whit they hear at the ingleside.”  In other words, bigotry is never learned, but begins in the home.  Even to this day there are few parents who teach their children tolerance of all, but most will still instil, either deliberately or inadvertently, their own prejudices into their children.  Likewise, very few parents are education professionals.  They have never gone to university to learn to be teachers, and they have never had experience of dealing with classes full of children, or all the work which being a teacher entails.  The simple fact is that if parents knew what was best for their children, there would be no schools, because there would be no need for them.  The overwhelming majority of people send their children to school because they know what is best for their children is to learn from teachers whom they know have a far better education than they shall ever have.

What McVey is saying is downright dangerous, and we need not look far to see the results of her thinking.  Indeed, we need only look across the North Atlantic to the USA, where religious maniacs who do not want their children taught in “Godless” schools home teach their children.  And the result is another generation of cretins coming up who are going to be laughed at throughout their lives for believing that the Earth was created by their god in six days, 6000 years ago, and who are going to have poor future employment prospects as a result.  Until they in turn in their dead-end jobs, bring up the next generation who are brainwashed believing that every word in the Bible is the unerring and factual word of their god.

Indeed, we see exactly the same thing in Muslim majority countries, and that includes the few countries where they are even allowed to attend school, girls are enforced to cover up completely, and that the best they can hope for is to have a good husband chosen for them, to whom they must be good and loyal wives.  And quite scarily, teaching like such has been exposed in some Islamic schools in the UK.

Amidst all this, we have the teaching in these religious communities that anything which detracts in the slightest from the cisgender heteronormative is an “abomination” to their god, from whence the protest at Anderton Park School has sprung.  In some interpretations of both Christianity and Islam, followers are taught that LGBTI+ people are at best to be shunned, at worst to be chased down and killed.  A 2016 ICM poll found that 52% of British Muslims polled believed that homosexuality should be illegal, and 47% said that that gay people should not be allowed to become teachers.  And of course, among this, as we have seen, some castigate all LGBT+ people are paedophiles, when in fact the LGBT+ demographic have the lowest incidence of paedophilia in society.  This smear is common to both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists.

As long as parents are filling the minds of their children with this bigoted filth, does Esther McVey still want to claim they know what is best for them?

But then, Ms McVey is equally wrong when she states “if parents want to take their young children out of primary school, out of certain forms or sex education, relationship education that is down to them”, for no part of LGBTI-inclusive education includes sex education.  Some of the protestors have jumped on the sex education bandwagon, claiming that the school is “sexualising” their children, when they are doing no such thing.  In fact, if there were any school teaching children as young as 5 any type of sex education, be it straight or gay, I too would object to that.  But the simple fact is that is not happening, it actually cannot happen under the law (either in England or Scotland), and anyone who claims that is what LGBTI-inclusive education is doing is either misinformed, or an out-and-out liar.  As far as those leading the Anderton Park protest are concerned, I know which of the two I am more likely to believe.

Certainly, there is mention of relationships in LGBTI-inclusive education, but that is only to explain same-sex relationships, which are simply a fact.  One mother at Anderton Park asked a reporter if they knew how difficult it was to explain to her little one “why some children have two mummies”.  What is she going to do?  Ignore it and hope that it will go away?  So when her child does actually encounter a child with same-sex parents, or sees a gay couple with a child, and asks questions, what is she going to say then?  Pretend they don’t exist and they never saw them?  What indeed is she going to say if her daughter turns out to be gay?  How about letting professionals in the field of education instead quietly explaining that love is love, and some people are attracted to the same gender?

Likewise, a Christian father recently phoned LBC Radio claiming that little children are too young to learn about any relationships.  Are they really?  So, Dad, I take it you’ve never told your kids fairy stories about women being swept off their feet by dashing, handsome princes?  Of kids being cruelly treated by their wicked stepmothers, or being rescued by beautiful princesses?  Of course you have.  Every parent has.  And in fact, I’d be more worried about instilling young minds with stereotyped perceptions of what is and what is not ‘beautiful’ – and the perceived roles of women – than the relationships within those stories.  But then, one wonders if the said father has any qualms about teaching his children about Adam and Eve, or even the relationship of Mary carrying the child of God for that matter?

Joking apart, there is an important point here; children are actually much more switched on and accepting of the lives of others than many adults give credence to.  And when they do see or hear of a child with same-sex adults, or hear of or encounter someone who comes out as gay, transgender, or any other aspect of the LGBTI+ spectrum, and ask questions, they deserve honest answers, and will more than likely be very accepting of that.  Likewise, as far as gender goes, science has proven that children as young as 3 are capable of expressing their gender; and that goes for all genders, including cisgender.  

It is not the children who are hating others at Anderton Park, or anywhere else.  It is the adults doing that, and brainwashing the children with their hate.

But if the protestors at Anderton Park Primary School are in the wrong, if Esther McVey is in the wrong, then they are nowhere near as in the wrong as the Westminster Government, who have been constantly asked by Sarah Hewit-Clarkson, and other head teachers across England to give clear guidance on LGBTI-inclusive education, and have remained steadfastly silent upon the matter.