Margo MacDonald: Don't mix racists with nationalists

Published on Wednesday 11 February 2009 09:07

LET'S get it straight . . . Jeremy Clarkson's description of the Prime Minister was rude and gratuitously cruel, but was it tinged with racism? Leave out the one-eyed bit, that was cruel and crass, but is it an expression of racism to call someone a "Scottish idiot"?

If he was charged with uttering words that could incite racial violence, I imagine it would be pretty difficult to make the charge stick unless evidence could be produced to prove that he habitually denigrated Scots for being Scots, implying indirectly or stating directly that they are stupid or unintelligent as a nation, and inferior in their accomplishments to his own.

I may be wrong but I think the source of his grievance is not racial hatred, but a real snobbishness at heart, and an annoyance that someone who, by Clarkson's lights, is a hick from the sticks, could be the PM of what he probably always refers to as "England" although cartographers and historians know it as the United Kingdom.

But from the point of view, I'd guess, of many Scots, he's more of an egotistic fathead than an English fathead. However, some Scots will doubtless preface their disparaging description of him with the word "English". A pal of mine has just produced an academic study showing that some English people have encountered anti-English sentiment in Scotland. Much as I admire his academic achievements, I can't really say I'm surprised at his findings.

But nor do I classify the mirror image of Jeremy Clarkson's boorishness towards Gordon Brown as racism as it was experienced by brown, coffee-coloured and black-skinned people in South Africa, Jews in Hitler's Europe, the Chechens and African Americans. This list, which is by no means comprehensive, is of people who have learned the difference between racism and national resentment through cruelty, torture and the structural discrimination against them in their countries' laws.

Rude expressions of resentment against England or the English doesn't strike me as being anything other than the sometimes frustration, sometimes justified anger and sometimes envy felt by smaller countries towards a bigger neighbour. This phenomenon can be witnessed between Portugal and Spain, Norway and Sweden, Austria and Germany.

Where the traditional attitudes may be in the process of changing between Scotland and England, a fairly wide section of English society sees Scotland to be enjoying the best of both worlds at the expense of English taxpayers. It's economic and political nonsense, of course, but some of the reporting of the decisions of the Scottish Parliament by journalists based in England, and with scant knowledge of the Scotland Act, has created an anti-Scottish resentment.

This surfaces in letters to newspapers, radio phone-ins and, sometimes, in opinion surveys. All have shown envy that Scotland should have no tuition fees for students and free personal care for elderly people, and follow with an accusation that the Scots are "subsidy junkies".

But the English people who write such letters do not classify Scots as inferior humans. They know that citizens of both countries have equality before the law, although a growing number tell opinion pollsters that only MPs representing English constituencies should be able to vote on laws that only apply in England.

What we have in the UK is an expression of the different nations in our collection of off-shore islands. As we are distinct communities who've sometimes had to struggle to assert our distinctiveness, it's only to be expected that there are sensitivities in our relationships.

But to describe these as racism is to demean the real thing as experienced by millions of Asian people forced by poverty in their home countries to work in communities where they are treated by their employers and, by the law, as inferior races.

There's a big difference between real racism and mean-spirited nationalism.

Working together

In the Holyrood Budget Debate Mk I, I opened my speech by asking my fellow MSPs not to kid themselves or mislead the people who inhabit the real world outside the Scottish Parliament.

What we call a "budget" is not – it's an account of how much we'll spend on the facilities and services either decided by, or devolved to, the Scottish Parliament. These are paid for out of the block grant from Westminster.

As Holyrood can't do as other institutions running countries, regions and even local councils and borrow money to finance capital projects, MSPs can't set their own priorities.

Nor can any Holyrood government take urgent action to meet an unexpected downturn in employment, for example.

Unemployment is rising now in the greater Edinburgh region. The Lib Dems in Holyrood have thrown their weight behind freeing the hand Holyrood has tied behind its back. So have the Greens. Labour and Tory parties have nothing to lose by doing the same.