Watershed

So, Eck didn’t do as well as most people, myself included, expected.

There has been acres of analysis today as to why.  Some of it on the more cerebral Nationalist side has been dedicated to asserting Eck had actually won. It was just that the rest of us hadn’t realised that.

I could spend time demolishing that but in some ways it would be unimportant. Eck lost because the consensus is that he lost.

Of much more interest is whether it was important. And it was.

It was important in three ways.

Firstly an awful lot of people were watching. Far more than I anticipated. Kind of restores your faith in politics to engage. Enough said.

Secondly, it legitimised the No argument. In his closing argument Eck tried, too late, to roll out what has been an underlying theme of the SNP campaign. To vote Yes was to be brave.

It didn’t matter if that was “true”. This wasn’t a matter of truth or lie. It was the articulation of a state of mind.  And it had a considerable traction.

I spoke recently to a Labour politician who had spoken at a public debate at a highland venue. He felt that his side had had the better of the platform speeches but had been rather taken aback as to the strength of Yes sentiment in the body of the hall. And the absence of support on his side. His location was sufficiently remote to rule out this being bussed in support for the Yessers. Perhaps Nationalist support was stronger (at least in this part of Scotland) than my friend had anticipated?

Except that, this being an attractive location, politics aside, my friend didn’t depart the next day but rather stayed on for a few days holiday. During which he was repeatedly approached by people privately, some of whom who had even been at the meeting, to confess their loyalty to the Union. “But you know how it is, you don’t want to speak up.”

Before yesterday, if to vote Yes was brave then, by implication at least, to vote No was cowardly. And nobody wants to admit cowardice, even if that is the entirely sensible option. That has changed.

I was out and about today. I spoke to various people in my own office and at the Court.  For good or ill my own loyalties are well known so people do engage me in conversation about the Referendum.

I would like to say that previous Yessers confessed second thoughts but they didn’t. What however did happen was that people who had clearly always been on my side but had felt it appropriate to keep their own counsel suddenly felt emboldened to speak up. I might have always thought Salmond to be a charlatan but suddenly they felt willing to say so as well.

Argument from anecdote is always dangerous but it is my feeling that this is a wider sentiment today. Not a gamechanger but rather a watershed.

The third reason last night was important is because Eck didn’t lose on style, he lost on substance.

When the “Westminster Parties” ruled out a currency union it was badly mis-handled. One of the rules of a democracy is that a politician must not appear to be an arrogant bastard. Even if he or she is an arrogant bastard. Although many politicians (mostly but not exclusively men) undoubtedly are.

But if there was a textbook example of arrongant bastardy then it must surely have been George Osborne’s visit to Scotland in February to rule out a currency union. Turn up, make a speech, take no questions, give no interviews, just dictate terms and then head off back to London.

And so the Nats could respond at the time by doing little more than saying “What an arrogant bastard”.

And that kind of worked. Except that it ignored the fact that, combined with the statements of Ed Balls and Danny Alexander, the idea of a currency union had been taken off the table.

It might well have led to an easy cheer at the various “public” meetings of the faithful that they are holding across the Country for the Nats to announce “George Osborne says we can’t have a currency union. What an arrogant bastard!” Except that this ignored that, even if he was an arrogant bastard, it was nonetheless his (elected) privilege to be so. And rejection of a currency union would be his (or any possible successor’s) decision. For no matter what an Independent Scotland might mean it would not conceivably involve the right to appoint the Government of England and Wales.

Last night the chickens came home to roost on the Nats forgetting that the converted are not the audience they need to....(eh)......convert.

Be in no doubt, this was not a one off. Every time Eck or Nicola now put their heads above the parapet the same question will be shot at them. What is your currency Plan B? Of course, if there was any answer that might increase their support then one or other would give it. Except that they know that there is no such answer. That is their problem.

And just before Eck thinks that he might as well get back into the ring here is another question Alistair might as well have put in a similar format. If we vote yes and negotiations to join the EU are not concluded by Independence Day on 24^th March 2016, what happens then?

Twelve minutes of cross examination is too long to evade answering and hope to run out the clock. As the First Minister discovered last night.

Although, in a different way, the clock is now running out on him.

Not a gamechanger

So, unsurprisingly, the Commonwealth Games have not proved to be a gamechanger for the Nats.

In the Spring, against the background of the polls stubbornly failing to move, the Nationalists briefed that they expected three things to change in their favour before September 18^th.

The first was that Scotland would vote differently from the rest of the UK at the Euro elections and would clearly reject UKIP. Well, we all know how that ended up. Despite the Scottish Nationalists having already hovered up much of the potential UKIP vote North of the Border

The second was that the UK opinion polls would move decisively in favour of the Tories. Who knows, that might somehow still happen over the dog days of August and early September but somehow I doubt it. The real battle between Labour and the Tories will only begin to be joined at the Party Conferences and these are scheduled to post date the Referendum. And it is to be joined with Labour ahead.

The third was to be the Commonwealth Games which were apparently to show that Scotland was capable of putting on a World class sporting event. Taken at face value this was a bit strange since nobody but the Nationalists ever doubted that we were. What they really meant was that they hoped that Scotland and England competing separately at the event would transmute the anglophobia of the SNP into the wider population.

Suffice to say that hasn’t happened. English competitors have not just been welcomed in Glasgow on the same terms as those of other nations. They (and the Welsh and Northern Irish) have enjoyed partisan support at a level only one small notch down from that extended to our own home team. You don’t need to take my word for that.  It was said by no greater authority than Lynsey Sharp on Radio Five Live this morning. And, without for a moment straying into overt politics, Scotland’s other medallists in the Olympic disciplines have then, over and over again, reflected in victory as to how much, while they had enjoyed the experience of competing in the “Friendly Games” against those more commonly their team mates, for tougher challenges ahead they looked forward to returning to the combined resources of Team GB.

And then of course we have the BBC. One really does wonder what possessed the Nationalists, while the national broadcaster was bringing us all this world class coverage, much of it fronted by Scottish presenters sitting alongside Scottish sporting legends, to respond by complaining about the prominent roles of Gary Lineker and Clare Balding on the grounds that they were English (“bastards”). That however paled into insignificance beside the rabble they mustered outside Pacific Quay on the middle Sunday of the games to demand that the BBC be banned altogether in Scotland!

Suffice to say I suspect that, one day, this latter event will be acknowledged to be misconceived in its timing.  At the very least.

So, so far, the proposed gamechangers have not changed the game. Don’t believe me, just look at the opinion polls.

And, thus, the Nats are now left with one last desperate play.

Having avoided doing so for months, Alex Salmond himself has graciously agreed to debate (on one occasion only) with Alistair Darling. He had of course already agreed to this back in July before running away (again) and he has yet failed to confirm whether he will ever do so again. But nonetheless, saving a mystery illness striking down the First Minister, this is to happen on Tuesday.

Well, here I am going to say something that might surprise you. Eck shouldn’t have been so scared. I think he will do alright.

There is a certain section of the nationalist movement who credit Eck with messianic properties. I suspect for some at least that flows from the assumption that if only one Party speaks for “the Nation” then the Leader of that Party must be beyond criticism. For to criticise the leader is to criticise the nation itself.  That has certainly been my experience on twitter this past week but it is more generally the pattern of nationalist politics the world over.

I’m obviously not in that camp but, to paraphrase the Pythons, while Eck might not be the messiah he is certainly a very able boy.

STV are understandably “bigging up” this event but, even as somebody immersed in the constitutional debate, I am not exactly looking forward to two hours of engagement  in various different formats, about an issue on which I have heard every possible argument. I will nonetheless watch it. So will lots of committed partisans on both sides. But, let’s be honest, the vast majority of still undecided voters are people who are not that interested in politics.

So the chances of many of the don’t knows sitting through all one hundred and twenty minutes of politics in preference to River City or watching Celtic in the Champions League Qualifier is, shall we say, improbable. And that is before you consider that the (generally) good weather appears predicted to continue on the evening.

Thus the outcome of the debate is unlikely to be called by those who have sat it out all the way.  For those who will, I confidently predict now that I will call it for Alistair while Stephen Noon will call it for Eck.

But the more important outcome will be called by the journalists watching. And here they would have to declare an interest. Although they won’t.  “Already losing side fails to convince” is not a story, whereas “Eck gives Yes a fighting chance” undoubtedly is.

And it will also turn on soundbites. While I have the greatest regard for Comrade Alistair and have no doubt all the facts are on his side...... if I was choosing between him and Eck in a soundbite competition.....

So expect the press to call it for Eck and STV (at least) then to replay his soundbites interminably.

But, as Southey had it, “What good came of it at last?”

Not very much is my prediction. We’ve had three years of this. My side has been ahead throughout. As indeed it has been for the entire period since Scotland has had a universal franchise.  Because, as we have seen this last ten days, most Scottish people don’t hate English people.  Mibbee that will all be turned round in the next six weeks.  But altogether more likely, mibbees naw.

Greenock Morton: My role in their survival.

As many of you will know, I am a great partisan of, as the song has it, “Saint Mirren from Pais-a-lee”.

About fifteen, indeed on reflection more like twenty, years ago, our great rivals, Greenock  Morton, were threatened with going out of business. Some cowboy, whose details now have faded in my memory, had gained a significant shareholding in the Greenock Club and was threatening to put them down so that he could sell off Crappielow (as we in Paisley know it) for redevelopment.

Anyway, this was an eventuality we Saints could not contemplate. So a “friendly” St Mirren against Morton match was arranged at the self same stadium to raise funds for those  trying to save the Greenock side.

I went with one of my nephews who was just reaching the age that he was not prepared to do something without at least some rationale being given. So as we drove down the M8 I was subject to some interrogation.

“Why are we going to this?”

“To try to help save the Morton”

“But we hate the Morton, don’t we?”

“Of course we do, but we wouldn’t want to see them going out of business.”

“Why?”

“Because then we’d have nobody to hate”

“Couldn’t we just hate somebody else.....I don’t know, Kilmarnock or somebody?”

“It wouldn’t be the same. Anyway, it is Ayr United who hate Kilmarnock. St Mirren hate Morton. That is the natural order of things.”

“Why?”

“Look, stop asking silly questions. It just is.”

As history now records, Morton were saved and, as a result, still, on the darkest of February Saturdays, as Saints fans  troop out of New Greenhill Road even after the most miserable of defeats, our fans will fall silent as one particular result  from the lower leagues is announced over the Tannoy. And if Morton have lost as well we will muster a ragged cheer and console ourselves that the day could have been worse.

Sporting rivalries are in the very nature of Team sports. And in their pursuit much heat can be generated. In the real world, nobody from Paisley thinks the “soapdodgers” from Greenock have a problem with their personal hygiene, any more than those from the Arse of the Bank truly believe the entire population of my own home town are addicted to Heroin.  Mind you, these are surely mild insults compared to the revelation, as Tim parks reported in his book about Italian football followers,  that the supporters of Hellas Verona refer to their rivals from Vicenza as mangi gatti  (cat eaters) in memory of a Sixteenth Century siege during which the residents of that latter city were indeed reduced to that sad condition.

But it is a mistake to assume that sporting rivalry has a wider resonance.  I readily confess to being in the “anybody but England” camp when it comes to team sports. Earlier today, while watching the Rugby Sevens,  I discovered, alongside many other Scots I suspect,  a previously unrecognised enthusiasm for Samoa.  So what? That is hardly the basis for a system of Government. And anybody who does surely needs to have a long think about themselves.

And anyway, team sports are quite different from individual events. Whoever a great athlete competes for in an individual contest, I am happy to give them my support. I might choose a favourite and I readily recognise that one reason for greater favouritism might be greater familiarity with one competitor over another .  But the idea that i would be hostile to any competitor because of their nationality seems to me to be bizarre.  And for what it is worth I believe that is a sentiment shared by the great mass of the population, whether dedicated sports watchers or otherwise.

Yet in their belief that the Commonwealth Games might represent a change in their fortunes the Nationalists seem to have ignored this relatively obvious observation.

To support Scotland and Scottish competitors comes naturally to all of us who live here because we are, or at least become, familiar with them.  Even if they are from Greenock.

I am as surprised and pleased as anybody to learn that we appear to be some sort of Commonwealth superpower when it comes to Judo. I say that even while being less than clear while watching it who is winning and why. But it has surely nothing to do with Scottish Independence to be enthusiastic about Scotland, or Scottish competitors, in a sporting context. As with so much else, it is also necessary to be antipathetic to England.  And to believe anyway that what happens in the sporting field,  particularly in the “Friendly Games”,  is capable of having any political significance.

I have no idea what the Nats expected here. That Greg Rutherford or Laura Trott or Nicola Adams would found themselves booed as bearing the hated colours of our oppressors?  Really?

Well, if they did they are as deluded as they appear to be about everything else.

Indeed, I suspect that if the Games have any impact at all on the Referendum it will be the exact opposite of Nationalist  hopes. The Games have brought an awful  lot of English people to Scotland. And contrary to Nationalist stereotype they have not spent their time here treating the local population with little concealed disdain while talking loudly in upmarket hotels about their indifference to the poor. Rather they have proved to be remarkably like.....us.

Except perhaps that when it came to the Rugby sevens they did not share our enthusiasm for Samoa.

A change of air

So, I’m back.

I am not the greatest fan of Bernard Ponsonby but just over a month back he observed that those who believed that the Independence Referendum would  dominate the public discourse in Scotland between now and 18^th September did nor appreciate the impact of the World Cup.

He was right.

By virtue of the Summer break I saw the World Cup in three different Countries. Or, if you prefer one view of Scotland’s status, four different countries.

Having left my own Country/Countries after the group stage, I saw the round of 16 and most of the quarter finals while with Andi’s family in Hungary. I then saw both the semis and the final itself in Italy.

The final I saw on a big screen in a square in Rome in the company of the citizens of many nations but most prominently, and understandably, of those of Germany and Argentina.

Sportingly, there was no love lost. Afterwards the Germans drank (even) more publicly in celebration while the Argentinians drank (even more still I suspect) privately in grief.  But during the event there was a strange kind of love. Love of “il calcio” certainly but also love of an event that could bring so many nations together in a moment of mutual interest in ninety or, as it transpired, one hundred and twenty minutes.

For the World Cup probably sums up more than any other event that the world is shrinking. That German fans would be as well informed of the constant diligence of Mascherano or the faltering form of Messi as the Argentinians were of the fortuitous absence of Khedeira or the potential danger of underestimating the German’s one extra rest day if the game went to extra time.

And when Klose was taken off for the last time in a World Cup, it wasn't just everyone in the stadium who applauded his final departure from the field, it was everyone in that square in Rome. And I suspect everyone in hundreds, thousands, of similar locations across the world.

The next day I was home.

To a country where, in the aftermath of the world coming together, some still seemed anachronistically determined to see reasons for putting us all once again apart.

Except that for all Bernard claimed that nothing would change during the World Cup something seemed subtly to have changed. The Nationalists had realised they were going to get beat. And that this was all the fault of the electorate.

I could cite any number of such pieces from the press or the blogosphere but they all share common themes. A bitterness towards the people of Scotland. Somehow we are not worthy of all the poems written and faces painted in the cause of “freedom”.  Surely any true patriot would be unconcerned with the economic technicalities? That they would if necessary be prepared to starve for their flag? Self determination is a wonderful thing but only if it is exercised in a particular way. Class politics must, at least for the moment, step aside in the interests of “the nation”. Most bizarrely of all, that after 18^th September, the SNP will enjoy a benefit from losing while the Labour Party will pay a price for winning.

For prominent examples over the last few days you need only look to Joyce McMillan in Friday’s Scotsman, Neil Ascherson in today’s New York Times or Stehen Maxwell in the New Syatesman. Perhaps at its most grande guignol, this piece by Peter Arnott  in Bella Caledonia.

Well.

There are two iron rules of democracy. The first is that when the voters have spoken, the voters have spoken. And the second? That the voters are always right.

I have written before about the parallels between Yes Scotland and the Labour Party of the early eighties. Then, even  more fully packed and self satisfied rooms of the same people on different, sometimes every, night of the week wore different hats and titles as the occasion demanded. The platform on a Tuesday, the audience on a Wednesday, the Committee on a Thursday.  Convincing themselves of their own certainty while the wider public looked on askance. Initially with disinterest and then, as that public inreasingly found themselves accused of lacking appropriate sympathetic zeal, with ever more certainty that those so fanatically engaged with politics were not quite "like them".

Yet, as the prospect of inevitable defeat sinks in it seems to me that the Nationalists have learned nothing from that earlier political period. Post 1983 there was a brief fashion for badges bearing the message “Don’t blame me, I voted Labour”. It certainly allowed us (and I readily concede I was one of “us”) a degree of comfort but as to persuading those who had not voted Labour? That accusing them of stupidity or, worse still, personal responsibility for what then followed was unlikely to win them over? That lesson took a longer time to learn. Arguably a full further fourteen years.

That wiser heads in the SNP have not always had an eye to at least the possibility of defeat is almost inconceivable but whether they will learn from it what they might need to survive; an acceptance of the result and an avowed determination to get on with the proper governance of Scotland for the next eighteen months? That is more difficult to call.

For the victors it will certainly be amusing to watch.

Buona Vacanza

This is my last blog before I depart on holiday and I'm somewhat demob happy. I toyed with writing it in pidgin Italian but was fearful of causing offence (even though I only speak pidgin Italian). I also suggested on twitter I might only write about my favourite artist, Piero della Francesca, but, to be honest, nobody comes here for art criticism.

So in the end I'll stick to my usual stuff, Scottish politics although I might illustrate it with some pictures from the great man.



I'll start with this. The Flagellation of Christ. In the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.

I first visited Urbino on the day Italy beat Spain in the quarter finals of the 1994 World Cup. "Il Roberto" (Baggio) scored the winner. Anybody who thinks the BBC is too anglo-centric in its coverage should reflect that, when the victory led the RAI News later that evening, the "highlights" of the game did not include the Spanish goal, which was merely mentioned in passing.

Anyway, this has been described as the greatest small painting in the world. I thought by John Mortimer but Wikipedia corrects me to Sir Kenneth Clark. The Wikipedia entry is well worth reading for the various interpretations of the painting it contains. What it doesn't really reflect is just how small the painting is. Not much bigger than a large laptop screen.

And yet it is a great painting. Small can be beautiful. One of the great fallacies of the referendum campaign is that anyone on our side ever described Scotland as "too small, too poor, too stupid" to be independent. In fact, the first person to say that was John Swinney, albeit attributing the words to (invented) others in the usual chip on the shoulder manner of so many Nationalists. The only way the word stupid features in the argument on our side would be to suggest that Scotland is far from a stupid country. That's why the No side is so clearly winning the argument at a canter.

Confession

Now, at this point I'm afraid my own conceit defeated me. It is simply too much of a leap, for me at least, to link Piero della Francesca repeatedly to the micro politics of Scotland five hundred and more years later.

But I can't be bothered starting again, not least because I'm keen to watch the football.

So,

I'm not always the biggest fan of Bernard Ponsonby but he observed ten days or so ago that the idea that the Referendum would dominate public discourse in Scotland now that the World Cup had started was perhaps, on the part of the political class, a somewhat optimistic one. And that is without Andy at Wimbledon or the Commonwealth Games to follow. But most importantly of all because, if even I am now thinking mainly of my holidays, then how much more so are people not obsessed with politics.

I have no idea how many people Eck thinks will be watching a two hour debate between him and Alistair Darling on 16th July, the Wednesday before the Glasgow Fair weekend, but I suspect it will be very few indeed. Even among those actually in the Country. Perhaps that is his hope

Of course the obsessives on both sides will still .....obsess.....about every twist and turn. But the public, particularly the undecided public, will have more pleasant ways to spend their time.

There is still an important period in the Independence debate but it will start only when the schools go back and, in Scotland at least, the Autumn starts.

I'll be back long since.

Meanwhile:

Firstly, I'm off to watch South Korea against Algeria.

Secondly, here is another painting by the great Piero della Francesca




Santa Maria Maddalena. Duomo, Arezzo.

Finally, a great Summer to all of my readers. Even the cybernats.

Cybernats

I have now got to the point of conceit to believe there might be an anticipation that I will produce a Sunday Night blog which will outrage some and reassure others. So this is it. although I don't have any particular "big point" to make.

Interestingly, this week it was revealed that there are only 78,000 active twitter accounts in Scotland and if you drill down into their number it would  reveal that the overwhelming majority of these have no interest whatsoever in politics.

Instead they are engaged with football, or popular music fandom, or simply in talking about what is happening on the telly. That is that part of the telly which doesn't include Scotland Tonight or Scotland 2014.

Perhaps we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we (by that I mean all of us reading this blog) are living in a pretty small bubble. Sometime in the past week somebody on twitter reported on an event specifically called to debate "the" question where those voluntarily present were asked how many had ever heard of Campbell Gunn. A solitary hand was raised.

If that is the impact the "scandal" of the week had had on those actually engaged, how much less so did it impact on the 5,217,000 Scots without an active twitter account?

Nonetheless, it is one aspect of that episode that provides my first (but not only) topic tonight.

Some time back the SNP clearly made a strategic decision to make common cause with a small group of cyberspace fanatics who saw it to be their task to try to verbally intimidate anyone prepared to suggest on the internet that they were not wholly persuaded of the merits of independence.

It would only be fair to point out that a number of committed nationalists were opposed to this strategy from the start, Who exactly were these people? Had they ever knocked a door or even delivered a leaflet in "the cause of Scotland"? Why did most of them feel it necessary to conceal their identities?

Nonetheless, Eck clearly felt they could do a job for him and, in the modern SNP, what Eck decides is final. So they were allowed to proceed with only the mildest of censure.

With the highlighting of the vile, misogynistic  attacks on Claire Lally and J.K. Rowling this week the chickens have come home to roost. When your key demographic weaknesses are with women and young people, what more lunatic strategy than to personally attack the mum of the year and the greatest living children's author? Suddenly the SNP leadership realised that they should have listened to wiser heads on their own side. Too late. In the words of Windsor Davies: "Oh dear, how sad, never mind".

But in the midst of the storm this week there has been one constant Nationalist counter argument. Yes, finally, we might be trying to disown this but the other side are just as bad. "Nicola Sturgeon received death threats on twitter".

Now this is an allegation that has gone the rounds before. And it falls into, the Nats hope, one of these situations where if something is said often enough people will come to assume it must be true.

Except, as a lawyer, it has always seemed to me to be a bit of an  incongruous allegation. You can be pretty outrageous on twitter. I have been myself. But direct threats to the life of another still attract the attention of the criminal law. There are, quite rightly, people in the jail right now for having made such threats against Neil Lennon.

So surely if people had threatened the life of the Deputy First Minister of Scotland that might reasonably have been expected to attract the priority interest of the Polis?

Well, as with so many assertions by the nationalists, when you look into this, this matter is somewhat different from how it was being portrayed last week. There is a single source for the allegation that Nicola Sturgeon received death threats on twitter and that single source is.................... Nicola Sturgeon, in an interview that she gave to the Daily Express. Now look at what Ms Sturgeon actually says. She suggests that the "threats" came from a single account (of a "sad and lonely individual" ) and that she herself did not take them seriously. Indeed so not seriously that she decided to report these "threats" not to the Police but rather to the Daily Express. In, it should not be overlooked, an earlier attempt to excuse the cybernats.

Yet by last week this "fact" was being held up by various SNP spokespeople as somehow equivalent to  the systematic vilification of Ms Lally and Ms Rowling by literally hundreds of nationalist online supporters. Or at least, since these supporters mostly remain anonymous, by literally hundreds of nationalist supporting accounts.

Which leads me on to whether there is a central mind controlling this. Well, there is and there isn't.

Most of the cybernats congregate around a single notorious nationalist website from which they take their cue. They certainly did that in the case of Claire Lally. And it was the failure to realise that what appears on that sewer often bears no relationship to the truth that led the fundamentally decent Campbell Gunn astray. Perhaps he was misled by the willingness of Yes Scotland to endorse the site as a source of "facts" when it is anything but.

So if the SNP are finally serious, as they claim to be, about reigning in the cybernats then a good start would be to ensure that there is no further reference to this sewer on Yes Scotland literature. Let's wait and see.

Or perhaps they should simply consider the second half of Jim Sillars intervention and reflect on where this man came from and how he comes to be so well funded?

And normally, that would be me. Except that something else happened today, Gordon Aikman announced he was dying..

I wrote at the start about appreciating how few of us exist in this electronic referendum bubble. But Gordon is one of us. One of the brightest and best and most tragically one of the youngest.

For me he did not need to write of the horror of Motor Neurone Disease, for it claimed the life of the wife of a close colleague who is now a major fundraiser in its combat. But even in her case it was in later life.

It is almost impossible to comprehend why a young man so full of life should be struck down in this way.

I can only end by doing what he does himself and ask you to donate towards finding a cure. That would almost inevitably come too late for him but it would be a worthy lasting legacy.

Arthur Donaldson and others

It was the seventieth anniversary of D-Day on Friday past.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has many great achievements to its name but surely its role in the defeat of Naziism is the greatest of these.

And, now the full history is known, it can be realised that it was a close run thing.

Those in the Conservative and Liberal ranks who would have appeased Hitler emerge with much discredit. As indeed do those of a 1930s pacifist bent in my own Party. But, in the end, Labour, at the instigation famously of Ernie Bevin, ditched the pacifist Lansbury and installed as leader instead Major Clement Attlee. Much more importantly, when that self same Attlee, at the demand of Leo Amery, spoke "for England" during the Norway debate, the Tories finally got it too. Not just that Chamberlain had to go but that the only credible candidate to replace him was Churchill.

And the ultimate triumph of these political events came on 6th June 1944 and over the ten months that followed until final victory.

Now, ask any Tory, Liberal or Socialist today about their own Party's history and they will acknowledge these events. They will be entitled to observe that neither Lansbury nor Chamberlain actively sympathised with Nazi ideology but they would readily acknowledge that their respective political responses to Naziism at the time were, not even just with the benefit of hindsight, fundamentally wrong.

Nothing I have said above is remotely controversial.

So, let us turn to the case of the fourth participant in Scotland's democracy. The SNP.

Now, in the 1930s they were a relatively new phenomenon, having only been founded in 1934. Actually, you would have thought that this being their eightieth anniversary they might have been keener to publicise that. I mean, all Parties are proud of their history. But for some reason the SNP are not. Here is why.

The original leader of the SNP was the innocuous figure of Alexander McEwan, who was even knighted by the King for his public service. But he was insufficiently Scottish for the rank and file. So in 1936 he was bumped out in favour of one Andrew Dewar Gibb. And let us be in no doubt about it, this man was a fascist.

Obviously, there were relatively few Jews in Scotland so Gibb seized on another target; Irish Catholics. You don't need to take my word for this, he wrote a number of books about the danger of Irish Catholics to the well-being of Scotland. And just like the wee man with the moustache, since outright racism needed a rationale, he seized not on their origin but their religion as their "fault". He was particularly outraged that "these people" (as he would have it) not only were allowed a vote but then used that vote to support the Labour Party. For he hated the Labour Party. But not quite as much as he hated the Communist Party, which he described as "too largely Jewish in origin".

There you are. One of Alex Salmond's direct predecessors. Never disowned by the SNP to this day.

But, I hear you cry, this was a long time ago!.As indeed it was, although still within the living memory of those who returned to Normandy this week.

So, presumably when Gibb departed, the Nats saw sense. No more anti-semitism. Well, No.

In May 1941 a man called Arthur Donaldson was detained under the emergency powers regulations for his pro Nazi sympathies. For he had been foolish enough to say the previous January to an MI5 officer (who he believed to be a sympathiser)

"We must, he declared, be able to show the German Government that we are organised and that we have a clear cut policy for the betterment of Scotland; that we have tried our best to persuade the English Government that we want Scottish Independence and that we are not in with them in this war. If we can do that you can be sure that Germany will give us every possible assistance in our early struggle. The time is not yet ripe for us to start a virile campaign against England, but when fire and confusion is at its height in England, we can start in earnest. He then went on to tell them that he had an idea in his mind for fixing up a wireless transmitting set in a thickly populated district in Glasgow or Edinburgh, in order to give broadcasts to the public"

(My emphasis)

Now, let's just consider when this conversation took place. After Kristallnacht. After the fall of France. When any lingering doubts about the nature of the Nazi regime could not surely be held by any reasonably informed person.  Yet here was this man wishing for a German victory and actively distancing himself from any continued resistance to it.

So what, I here you cry again?  So what even if this guy was a member of the SNP? All Parties have nutty members.

Except that in 1960, during my lifetime, after six million Jews had died, twenty million or more Russians and indeed more than 50,000 Scots, without ever disowning these views, this man was elected Leader of the SNP. 

And I will, believe me, come back to that.

For even then you say, this is all still history!

Well, Donaldson served as leader of the SNP until 1969, when he was succeeeded by a man called William Wolfe. Mr Wolfe was clever enough to keep any pro Nazi sympathies under wraps. But he remained in office until 1979, during which time, before 2007 at least, the Nationalists were at their most electorally successful. When, having demitted office, he was given the honorary position of Party President. And Mr Wolfe might then have faded into obscurity. Except that the removal of political necessity allowed him to express his true views.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II came to Scotland. I am  not a Catholic or even an unconditional admirer of the Catholic Church. But I recognised even then that this was an important and good man in the slow thawing of the Cold War. At least as importantly a man whose presence on Scottish soil would bring great joy to many of my fellow Scottish citizens. Except that wasn't the view of Mr Wolfe, let us not forget, leader of the SNP for a full ten years. 

Catholicism, he believed, was an alien religion, practiced largely by Irish immigrants, who, even if they had by now been here for several generations were, by implication, not "true" Scots. Now, don't forget, this wasn't in the depths of history, it was only just over thirty years ago. When Alex Salmond was already a member of the SNP. And while it might only have been in 1982 that Wolfe made his views public they could surely not have been a secret to those who worked with him daily before that?

Although, since those of you who have borne with me this far might see the echo of the words of Andrew Dewar Gibb, perhaps it is not unreasonable to assume they were widely shared internally within the SNP. After all, the Catholics weren't "really" Scottish. That was demonstrated by their voting Labour.

And the reaction of the SNP to Wolfe's remarks at the time? Did they disown him, expel him? Did they........

Instead they protested mildly that he did not speak for the SNP. Far from him being expelled or even being removed from office, instead he was allowed to step down in his own time and when he died in 2010, (yes, that's right, just four years ago), he was described by Alex Salmond, cuddly friendly inclusive Alex Salmond, as 

"incredibly influential in developing a social democratic ethos for the SNP in terms of its political identity".

Well, I don't know about you but that tends to lead me to think that Mr Salmond must have a pretty warped view of social democracy if he believes that Mr Wolfe had a place within its ranks. Mr Wolfe was a piece of racist scum would have been more in line with my assessment although,  to be fair, the First Minister might just have said that it was best not to speak ill of the dead. Except, tellingly, he didn't.

But anyway, that was four years ago! Since then the SNP really really have been converted to social democracy. I mean look at Yes Scotland! It has the support of Pat Kane, Lesley Riddoch, Patrick Harvie. These people aren't fascists!

And of course they aren't. Nor indeed are most modern members of the SNP. But, and this is a big but, why won't the SNP confront their own history? And why won't their media cheerleaders demand that they do so.

I realise that this is an angry piece. It is anger provoked by an article in today's Sunday Herald. In it Iain McWhirter states

"The character of "Naw" is revealed Daily in the stream of sneering tweets by its social media outriders who portray the SNP as Party that celebrates Nazi-sympathisers............"

I think by that he means me for I had indeed pointed this out on Twitter.

But more tellingly he goes on to assert

"I don't know who they think believes this stuff"

Well, I believe it. Only belief is not the right word for I know it with certainty to be true. Every year, every single year, at the SNP Conference, as part of the official programme, there is an Arthur Donaldson Memorial lecture. Yes, that Arthur Donaldson, the one who was interned for being..........a Nazi sympathiser. Last year it was delivered by Andrew Wilson. The year before by Blair Jenkins. That is a matter of public record. And Iain McWhirter knows that for, as a journalist, he will surely have attended at least one of these events.

So, two final questions.

The first for which I cannot possibly find an answer is why Iain wrote what he did? You'd need to ask him that.

The second is however more telling. Why do the Nats persist in honouring this man Donaldson? Even I don't believe the likes of Nicola Sturgeon or Roseanna Cunningham would want, in an ideal world, to have anything to do with him.

The reason is that to drop the Donaldson lecture would infuriate a significant minority in nationalist ranks. Who would dissent, thus highlighting their views. And that would be disastrous for the SNP electorally. So let us all, they calculate, just ignore that this happens and hope that nobody notices. That nobody notices that a significant minority in our governing Party hate the English so much that they believe that even a Nazi victory in the Second World War would have been an opportunity for "the betterment of Scotland."

And let's just pretend for the moment that these people, the Donaldson faction, SNP rank and file in some number, after independence, would not then be likely to move on to hating somebody else. Somebody nearer at hand. Citing indeed that such views had a legitimate tradition within "their" Party.

It is annoying enough when the Nats mislead people about the future but when they are prepared also to mislead them about the past? What kind of regimes come to mind as doing that?