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When the Union has run out of arguments, and it looks like Scotland is about to take the high road, it throws the dice for the last time: The Ulsterisation of Scotland. “Leave this empire,” it says, “and we’ll treat you like we treated the Irish.” Threats? Really?
Everything in the Scottish political arena, other than the relentless drive of the Yes camp towards independence, is in the midst of frenetic transformation. Now that the Tories have absorbed the rancid rump of New Labour they are being forced to reshape their Conservative identity to make the new arrivals feel welcome, and the remnants of Old (read: tired) Labour have been dragged to a new, much further left centre to bleat pathetically about Home Rule. These seismic changes are irreversibly transforming Scotland’s political character. Tories have become Unionists and Labour has become irrelevant. What does this make us?
We are a lot of things; we’re Nationalists, Environmentalists, Republicans and Socialists whatever – working together as Separatists. The rapid acceleration in the polarisation of our political platforms has brought a new term to our lexicon: Ulsterisation. Apparently the Tories-cum-Unionists are keen to impress on us that what is happening is the Ulsterisation of Scottish Politics, suggesting that we are becoming another resistence struggle under military occupation. Nothing about this term or the people wielding it is neutral. It is a clearly loaded phraseology designed to do what the British do best – inspire fear.
Let’s be perfectly clear about this, it is Ruth Davidson’s freshly rebranded Unionist party (sound familiar?) and the British political and media establishment (sound familiar?) who are so eager to popularise this disgusting language. Instrumentalising the brutalisation of Ireland’s occupied counties by the British Army to sow fear is profoundly disrespectful to both the people of Éire and Alba. It was the Union that deprived Ireland of corn during the Great Famine, terrorised it during the 1919 – 1921 War of Independence (after refusing it independence when it voted for it in 1919), and opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry in 1972. That was Ulsterisation, and it wasn’t the Irish who Ulsterised Ireland.
So if the Irish never caused the Ulsterisation of their own nation and we’ve no intention of doing it in Scotland, then who’s suggesting it, and why? It’s a threat. It’s a vicious and dirty threat, and it isn’t even subtle. The unequivocal threat the Unionists are making is this: If you dare push this independence thing any further we will cleave your country in two, keeping the best bits for ourselves. We will have your oil, your fisheries, and whatever else we please, and we will so embitter one Scot against another that you will spend the next hundred years blowing yourselves up. “Our Heroes” in the British Army will shoot you on your own streets, break your mother’s face with a rifle butt, and jail you without charge or trial.
Cameron’s Apology for the British Army Murdering Irish People in Ireland
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