As Britain hastily cobbles together a black history of Britain the coming of the Windrush generation is being framed as an invitation. It was nothing of the sort. The British Empire was imploding. In order to offer a lifeline to its predominantly white imperial ruling caste in the colonies it granted citizenship to former subjects, not thinking that the native populations and the decedents of former African slaves would take up the freedom this citizenship offered with such relish.
Tartan Day in New York
Tartan Day, much like Paddy’s Day in the States, isn’t about Scotland. It is a saccharine projection of dim-witted American expectations of Scotland and half remembered traditions of the old country. More, than this: It is about whipping up sales in the international centre of the religion of capitalism. Tartan – or “plaid” as our Merican cousins prefer to call it – is about money; it’s about playing on the emotions of American’s who have been convinced their great granny came over from Brigadoon or, more likely, Balamory. Tartan Day is about giving them what they want.
Israel can’t use the Holocaust as an Excuse
Israel’s goal is the total destruction or at least the absolute subjugation of Palestine to make way for the completion of the Zionist project, the creation of a hegemonic colonial-settler Jewish ethno-state. Criticism of this genocidal programme and the provisional Apartheid state it has constructed has been muted by the shadow of the Holocaust. Apparently the nations of the world are somehow guilty of a crime so monstrous against Israel that they are simply now no longer able to point out the moral enormities of Israel.
Scottish Independence and Anti-English Bigotry
Scottishness is not about the blood in my veins. There is nothing genetic about being Scottish. No matter how soggy the turf, no matter how refreshing the water, or glorious the scenery, there is nothing in Scotland’s fields and brooks that makes us Scots. Scotland is a beautiful relationship; a long and intimate conversation with the people we love most and count as our own. It is a friendship that continues to be new and alive no matter how long the parting or wide the distance between us. My Scotland is home – where I started and where I am going.
Independence: Because we’re not on Rewind
This isn’t terminal for Scotland yet. The game for us isn’t quite over. Recent polls have indicated that support for independence among younger voters is on the rise, approaching sixty per cent. The future for Scotland is independence. The question right at this moment though is if we will be independent before England demolishes our economy and infects us with its poisonous neo-imperial bigotry and racism. What is clear in Scotland is that Scotland is not a nation on rewind.
Clearance: Britain’s Guilt-Ridden Denial
We are not permitted the language of genocide – legally and technically precise as it is – because it makes certain people uncomfortable. That’s the seat of all the anger and vitriol right there: That Britain did this to Gaelic Scotland is discomforting, it tears from Britishness the fraudulence of benign and beneficial patronage and lays bare its naked and vicious and murderous ethno-nationalist imperialism. One simply cannot have the comfort of being “British and Scottish” and accept as historical fact that Britain did this and still does this.
Britain and Ireland: Neighbours and Frenemies
Trust? Kinship? Not likely. Britain is the same old heart-scald it has always been to Ireland. Nothing has changed. This should be a lesson to Scotland and Wales. If people think the English state is the geopolitical equivalent of a bout of haemorrhoids while they’re trying to free themselves from it, they should consider how those who have already beaten it are treated.
In Conversation with the Orange Order
Portadown’s Orangemen now no longer march from the Drumcree church and so the insistence on parading down the nationalist Garvaghy Road has ended. This parade made its way down “Protestant streets” – a reminder of the social segregation of Northern Ireland today – where union and loyalist flags were waving in the breeze.
Random Public Journal 