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By Jason Michael

As we come closer to the end of Britain we are feeling the last line of the empire’s defence – pure hatred and bile. The fantasy of Great Britain has come to an end but the snake is going down spitting.

Travelling on the Cairn Ryan to Belfast ferry is and has always been an experience. Unlike flying or taking the train sailing affords the passenger the freedom to wonder, to mix with fellow voyagers, to have the odd casual natter. For the better part of two hours the vessel – in this case the Stena Super-Fast – takes on something of the ancient metropolis; travellers from neighbouring, yet very different cultures enjoy a brief opportunity of encounter. On-board there are people from both parts of Ireland, people from both communities of Northern Ireland, there are Scots – day-trippers and business types, and holidaymakers from further afield. It’s an oasis where we all find ourselves ordering refreshments from the same watering hole. As I said, it’s an experience.

Having picked up a book on Gàidhlig grammar in Glasgow the day before, my companion and I were taking turns testing one another’s vocabulary to pass the time. I learned a new and useful phrase: Tha mi a ’dol a-mach a smocadh. When learning a new language I have always found the essentials to be related to the ability of the listener to speak English, sell me tobacco, or serve me a pint. Once we have these covered everything else eventually falls into place.

As we were drawing into the port at Belfast, as the car passengers were making their way below decks back to their cars, an older man who had been sitting alone at the next table leaned over to us; the veins on his neck visibly throbbing and his face contorted with aggression, and said: “Christ, you look about fifty! Weren’t you supposed to have learned that muck years ago?” His thick Ulster accent betrayed his assumption. He had assumed we were learning Irish – a language that had obviously become framed in his sectarian imagination as the tongue of his Irish Republican, Catholic, or nationalist enemy. To him this language was “muck,” and our presence next to him had enraged him. I put his guess at my age down to me being exhausted. That’s my excuse.

“Ach,” I said smiling at him, “we were never taught Scots Gàidhlig in school. I just thought I’d give it a go.” You’re never too old to learn. Hearing my Scottish accent and realising he had made a serious mistake – he had made a mistake whatever way you look at it – he recoiled in shock. Everything around him deflated, and we could see the trouble he was having processing the information I had offered. He could no longer see us as his hated republicans, as “Fenians,” Catholics, or nationalists. Sure, we weren’t even Irish. He looked humiliated. Playing dumb, I made sure to say “Cheerie-o” as we got up to leave. This bigoted old man could no longer even give us eye contact.

There was certainly more than a pinch of this in a recent unionist tweet that quickly did the rounds over Scottish Twitter. Some absolute nudnik – a Luddite of the highest order in my estimation – fired off a tweet about the attire and label decoration of the SNP MP Ian Blackford at the war party celebrations at the cenotaph in London. Alan Thomson, a “business man” and “sceptical about independence man” from Kinross, on seeing Ian Blackford wearing a kilt, spat out: “The kilt is a serious mistake but a bigger one is the SNP lapel badge instead of a poppy.”

What Alan and many others like him saw was “that muck” they despise – the expression of Scottishness. Of course he couldn’t have been more wrong, as is most often the case. The lapel badge was not an SNP badge at all. It was a poppy mounted on the Scottish saltire flag, a badge issued by Poppy Scotland to commemorate the 2017 death cult festivities. He was sorely mistaken about the kilt as well, as most of Scotland was quick to point out. It was perfectly alright for boys to be conscripted in their droves in Scotland and to be sent in their kilts to die in “the muck.” It was okay too for Charles Saxe-Coburg und Gotha to be pictured laying a poppy wreath in a kilt and for his son – the one who dressed as a Nazi and got caught doing cocaine with a sex worker in Las Vegas – to turn up to the event unshaven.
https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/929968360464543744

Alan and his cronies fled from Twitter, deleting and blocking as they went, faster than the retreat of the London regiment from the Battle of Mons. But their mistake exposed pretty much everything we really need to know about these people. Their hostility to the Scottish National Party and the idea of independence is not established, as they love to pretend, on an intellectual disagreement with a political idea. Had that been the case there would have been no need for the trigger happy ad hominem assault on Ian Blackford – a mode of operation that has been a hallmark of unionism since the get-go. What this lays bare is their hatred of Scotland and the idea of independence.

The sheer venom and disgusting anti-Scottish bigotry in the replies to tweets of this kind proves this beyond all doubt. Yes, Alan is Scottish, but that in no way means he is incapable of hating Scotland. The Duke of Wellington, an Irishman, famously said of his Irish roots: “Just because you are born in a stable does not make you a horse.” People like Alan are British, and they want nothing of the stink of Scottish manure hanging about them.

Britishness – or at least the Britishness which they hold so dear – is a dying imperialist dream, wrapped up in its own delusional fantasies of cultural and racial greatness. The pomp of and nostalgia for what was once the largest empire in the world gives them a peg on which to hang and so construct their identity, a conceit of national meaning draped over what has become a shoogly peg. It is this, more than their shame at being Scottish, which fills them with hate. Scottish independence holds up a mirror to them, and in it they see the greatest and final challenge to their dream – the end of Britain. Their spiteful hatred and poison is all that is left in their armoury; the barrel is well and truly empty and they are scraping the bottom.

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43 thoughts on “Good Bye Britain: We’re Sick of the Hate”

  1. Well said covers most Scottish people thoughts regarding anti Scottish unionist propaganda sooner we are the Republic of Scotland the better and all the residential Scottish haters can move on down south

    Liked by 2 people

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  4. Jason Michael fails to point out that I apologised four times for my error regarding the lapel badge. Didn’t suit his narrative.
    Still waiting for him to apologise for his Uncle Rab ‘error’

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    2. I see you’ve been tweeting about that ‘”so called” rape clause, Alan (15th Nov, 14.56pm) Dear-me.
      Being brutally raped, then having to relive that experience just to qualify for assistance is acceptable in your world? Why don’t you delete your whole Twitter account, Alan?
      Hey, here’s an idea; why don’t you just delete yourself? Yes, that might work out.. Do your bit to clean-up Scotland. You don’t have to apologise afterwards. Good-chap.

      Liked by 3 people

    3. You’re an auld numptie who has nothing better to do than fire off e-mails to The Courier in a frequency that implies you’re in competition with Batshit Jill. Can you not take up bowls or something and gie us all peace?

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Well played on the ferry.

    The sooner we Scots are out of Britain the better for all out people, especially the future generations who will have the opportunity to grow up without the hate and prejudice against their own people that too many live with now.

    Liked by 4 people

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  8. Interesting article but I did not the incorrect reference to the Duke of Wellington reference to stable , horse. Irishness etc this is mistaken quotation made by Daniel O’Connell in stead of the Iron Duke although O’ Connell did utter it in Wellington’s presence

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    2. Glad you made that clear ,you got there before me..You are correct in saying it was that great leader Daniel O Connell who made the remark and certainly not The Duke…

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  9. Sick and tired of the constant drip, drip, drip of negativity from unionists, plus the added outright verbal violence. Thankfully I’ve not been physically assaulted by any No voters but some have. Even friends of friends find it acceptable to insult Scots, pour scorn on Scotland and the Yes movement and any background I provide on the reality, and instead take media distortions as fact and refuse to do their own objective research.

    I’m sure most of the online garbage is just output from paid trolls and bots – they at least are pretty easy to spot and block. It’s the prejudice, insults, threats and general hate from ordinary people that makes me keener than ever to cut our ties and just be good neighbours. Enough really is enough.

    Liked by 2 people

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  10. I was ok with the author until his clever clever virtue signalling choice to use Gàidhlig rather than Gaelic. If he doesn’t want to write in English, he can publish in the Gàidhlig ghetto echo chamber. I am sure calling him out as a self indulgent ass will be viewed as cultural repression or some such…

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  14. So at least you acknowledged that you did in fact see my apology for the error.
    But you thought it not worth mentioning. You lack integrity.
    As regards your Uncle Rab, you provided a link, but I see no apology.

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    1. Alan I have no need to apologise. Once again you’ve gone and jumped the gun and made an absolute fool of yourself. Now, seeing as you have blocked me on Twitter I am now blocking you from here. It has been a pleasure. Good bye.

      Liked by 3 people

  15. Whether you apologise or not. You lowered yourself to nothing more than a Unionist hell bent on Crying Scotland down at every opportunity. People minded like you should do the decent thing and Move South of Hadrians wall. Turas math dhut!

    Liked by 1 person

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  17. I thoroughly enjoyed your article. As an outsider in the Far East who have no personal stake whatsoever in the Scottish independence or keeping the Britain intact, I cannot help but recall how a friend of mine of Pakistani descent who was born in the north of England and grew up in Croydon referred to his nationality as ‘British’, instead of English or anything else. If the UK were to disintegrate, would he be able to call himself “English”? Would that signify a purely neutral civil identity and not an ethnonym? I suppose the same applies to non-Scottish/Anglo minorities in Scotland too.

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    1. As is always the case Atsuo, people will always be free to call themselves British, English, Welsh, Irish, or Scottish. People will always be free to make up their own minds on how to identify themselves. Thanks.

      Liked by 1 person

  19. It takes a singular mindset to view everyone opposed to independence as an enormous fan of Britishness. It’s a terrifically useful asset. Such binary nonsense is one reason why the the independence vote was carried by more sophisticated thinkers. But you carry on conflating Irish bigots with No voters. It’s a very attractive look in the polling booth

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  21. Sorry to point out that in no way will it be the end of, “Britain”, only the end of, “The United Kingdom”, bit of Britain. By confusing the two you are playing their vile propaganda game for them.

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  22. Loved the ferry encounter , glad you left him with time to reflect on his comments .The harder job for us is to change the Britnats that live in our own country , they are so blinkered by their hatred of the SNP they don’t even know what they are saying !

    Liked by 2 people

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  25. During the early eighties I served a Two Year tour in Northern Ireland in a Spearhead Battalion when I got leave I would travel home using the Larne to Stranraer Ferry and the only time I was disgusted in all that Two Years was travelling on that Ferry when it was full of Rangers supporters going to a Rangers home game never have I experience such hate and Bile so much so that it made me totally rethink on why I what I was doing there and the result being that I left the Army and joined the SNP as soon as I could as I no longer wanted to be associated in any way with people whom carried that Flag and sung they kind of songs on the so called behalf of Britain it wasn’t the Britain that I wanted or knew.

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  28. Whow this is a powerful message , well written and true as we have all experienced this kind of racism ,so sad .
    I hope I live to see the days when people do not need to be oppressed , so that a rotten Britishness can prosper

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