Yes, there has been squabbles and dark history – this is Europe – but friendship and familiar understanding comes easily to these island people. It’s said that the natural human inclination everywhere is towards cooperation and kinship regardless of flags and anthems. This is especially evident, though, in various border-ignoring geographic, and linguistic pockets. The Scandinavian countries. Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Iberians. The Benelux. Britain and Ireland. Places where cultural differences are minimal, something entirely separate from the constitutional arrangement. The Scots, the English, the Welsh and the Irish do not need to have the same passport to get along.
WHAT INDEPENDENCE IS NOT ABOUT – hate
It is against this obvious reality that we are treated to the spectacle of incessant, good faith destroying, attempts to link moves towards independence with the ugly stupidity of Anglophobic prejudice. These attempts can be subtle or agricultural, from anonymous trolls, conniving Unionist bloggers, or even elected politicians and established media with an agenda. A particularly underhand and cynical tactic sprinkled in at regular intervals by people who want to shut down a discussion they don’t want to have.
All taken together, it amounts to a kind of unacknowledged rolling smear campaign against an idea. A baseless insult to millions of people, and a deliberate poisoning of the debate. After all, conversations don’t get anywhere productive when one side is forced into defending themselves against scurrilous accusations from the other. And there can’t be many independence-backing Scots who haven’t been accused of being anti-English at some point, for no other reason than that they are independence-backing Scots.
Ask for evidence and you will invariably be sent a screenshot of a tweet from a random nobody or some photos of the same two characters, wearing hazmat suits, holding a banner at the border during lockdown.
Are the hundreds of thousands of English-born people, who voted Yes, Anglophobic? Or the thousands of active ‘English Scots for Yes’ members? Is Billy Bragg anti-English? George Monbiot? Noam Chomsky? Is their criticism of how the UK works merely ‘code for the English’? What about the 62 countries that have gained independence from the UK? Was their real motive ‘anti-English bigotry’? Do people who support independence also hate the Welsh? Are Unionists anti-Scottish?
Of course not. In reality, hundreds of thousands of English people commendably saw through that nonsense and voted Yes. Contrary to the familiar narrative, the independence movement has a lot of support in England, is full of English people who live in Scotland, and is thoroughly internationalist and progressive – with very different motives from any mischievous Unionist characterisations.
Criticism of the British state is clearly valid. As is the growing sense that independence is, given the evidence, the logical (if you want something done…) way to improve things. It’s easy to see why, for the lazy-minded, unscrupulous, Unionist blogger or GB News presenter, dismissing people as anti-English bigots is just too tempting to resist. It’s far easier to robotically join in with the group and cry ‘Anglophobia’ than to acknowledge an issue that matters to people – because they fear it harms the UK cause. Easier, and with the bonus of worrying a large group of voters.
Easier, but incredibly classless, needlessly divisive, manipulative, exploitative and, frankly, it just looks foolish when so many English people are also expressing distaste at being let down by Westminster. People who know London’s dominance affects them too – especially when the ‘most deprived areas in the UK’ also normally means the ‘most deprived areas in Western Europe’.
