Strained relations

Writing about the Scots, Dr Samuel Johnson said they were mainly liars who had no cabbage until Cromwell introduced it, subsisted on horse food, and the finest sight a Scottish person could ever see was the high road leading to England. Outrageous maybe but given he was writing over 300 years ago, his words can perhaps be buried with the prejudice of the time.

Or can they? Writing in the English edition of the Daily Mail on the day after the start of the 12-month countdown to the independence referendum, the journalist, Simon Heffer, praises Johnson’s assessment of the Scots and goes further than even the contemptuous Johnson may have dared.

“Over the next 12 months, it will be distressingly hard to avoid Scottish voices on TV and radio droning on about whether or not Scotland should vote in a referendum to leave the United Kingdom next year,” writes Heffer in a piece entitled ‘Why the Scots must vote for independence. It’ll save the rest of us a fortune’.

“To make matters worse, it is increasingly a debate from which the English, who as taxpayers send a hefty subsidy to Scotland each year to keep that country afloat, are wilfully excluded,” he opines.

“In a true democracy we, too, would be allowed our say, with a vote of our own next September, since there are two of us in this particular marriage.

“Since the mid-Nineties I have been convinced that England and Scotland would benefit from a divorce, or at least from a trial separation. Many Scots don’t much like the English and appear ungrateful for everything that England does for them in showering them with money,” he drones on.

“The truth is that those nationalists who argue that Scottish prosperity is retarded by their ‘English oppressors’ are living in cloud-cuckoo land.

“Furthermore, I believe that an independent Scotland would soon find itself unequal to the struggle of self-government, because the English money tap would be turned off. Its people would have to work, or starve.”

It’s a repugnant diatribe that even the Daily Mail had the sense to leave out of its Scottish editions. And it would be easy to ignore as an ugly piece of ill-informed junk only fit for the dustbin were it not for the nagging question of whether this is the start of a trend, where the not so casual racism and flagrant xenophobia of London-based commentators is allowed to poison what should be a serious and exciting debate about the future of the UK as a whole?

Because regardless of the outcome of the vote next year, we will have to live as friends not foes and inflammatory opinions by factually starved commentators will only stoke the fire of prejudice and ignorance.

The journalist Andrew Marr, a Scot who has now lived in England for 30 years, claimed that there was a worrying degree of toxic Anglophobia in Scotland today. His comments made headline news but where was the evidence? Where does Marr witness this frightening antipathy on his infrequent forays north? It’s more than irresponsible, it’s insulting to simply deride a nation as a bunch of racists in a polemic based on anecdote and then leave for the safety of the south east where even he admits there is so little in the media about the referendum that it is laughable.
Marr may be horrified to be bundled in with the likes of Heffer but both display a level of naivety and ignorance about the nature of the independence question and the dangers of making claims without substance.

The one point I concede is Heffer’s vague notion that this is a debate to be had by all citizens of the UK. And while I disagree with his assertion that there are two of us in this so-called marriage, because I think there are at least three – the voters in Scotland on either side of the debate as well as the rest of the UK – this remains, based purely on the rules of democracy, a decision to be made in Scotland by Scots and for Scots. However, the implications of that ballot will undoubtedly have an impact on our English neighbours regardless of which way the vote goes. Which is why odious little pieces that flout any level of common decency or balanced journalism simply appeal to the lowest common denominator that breeds on a warped bigotry rooted in falsehoods about Scots and should have no place in this historic decision.

Scotland has been having the debate for some time. We had already tired of talking about process and significantly moved from the arguments about whether Scotland could be independent to whether it should be independent. England, meanwhile, with its metropolitan, London-centric view of the world, needs to catch up.

The debate is already febrile. It is binary in its nature. There is criticism of us all inherent on both sides of the fence so how can it not be? But when political point-scoring includes hate-fuelled commentary bound by mistruth and racism then the result is not a healthy one.

Boris Johnson, a man no stranger to denouncing a whole city by his own prejudice, once described his ancient namesake, Samuel Johnson, as a sexist, xenophobic and free-market, monarchy-loving advocate of the necessity of human inequality. He also claimed that that not even Simon Heffer would get away with the kind of Jock-bashing Johnson indulged in. Changed times indeed. And when you are having to take lessons in diplomacy from London’s floppy-haired mayor, perhaps it is time to seek some solace and contemplate how your actions impact on the future relations within these isles regardless of a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.