There is no escaping the racism in Rule Britannia, a cultural weapon of British racial supremacy that has been deployed against Irish Catholics in the six counties, against black and brown immigrants and asylum seekers in England, and against those now branded ‘traitors’ by the Brexiteers in every part of the United Kingdom. This is a truly ugly song, almost no different from the innocent lyrics of the marching music used by the SS and other ‘patriotic’ tunes and anthems used by racial states around the world to impress on the dominated their subject status.
Humiliating Our Activists
Saturday is important here because on Saturday a small group of concerned Scottish people went to the border and held up a banner to traffic coming north over the border reading: ‘STAYCATION – KEEP SCOTLAND COVID FREE.’ Not a word of a lie, this is true. It’s all over the internet. Look it up. And almost immediately members of the Scottish government – MSPs and MPs – reacted. And what a reaction! Scotland’s Justice Minister, Humza Yousaf, a man touted by many to be the next First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party – Scotland’s pro-independence party...
The Clown Mask on British Racism
In fewer than fifty words he had tied in all the themes of the right-wing threat narrative – everything from terrorism to xenophobia and white genocide – and was leaping on this awful and as yet largely unreported tragedy. So much credit has to be given to the people of Glasgow – well, people make Glasgow – and the whole of Scotland; they didn’t buy his obvious race baiting comment, and in short order told him what to do with his pathetic racist opinions. But, then, this tweet wasn’t directed at Scotland. Farage knows how poorly he’s thought of in our country.
England’s Possession
Regardless of this, however, Scotland is not England’s possession. Scotland and the Scottish nation – its culture, identity, and resources – are the shared heritage and possession of the Scots. The incorporating union of 1707 has always been exactly that to Scotland; the fusion of two distinct kingdoms. But, and from the very beginning, in England the union – which was secured with the bribery of Scots nobles and the threat of invasion – has always been understood as the annexation or absorption of Scotland by England. So, when we hear English people opine about Scottish independence...
Dear England
Westminster is not the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as it pretends. The massive democratic deficit in the House of Commons – in which English seats more than double the combined seats allocated to Scotland, Wales, and the occupied counties in Ireland – ensures that Scotland is not represented in what is mathematically and for all other intents and purposes the English parliament. Westminster is where the democratic will of the Scottish people – an entire nation – is dominated and so silenced by the will of England and its people.
Desecration of Robert the Bruce
There is no difference between British nationalism and neo-Nazism and fascism. British nationalists are simply England’s neo-Nazis and fascists. I’m saying ‘England’s’ here quite deliberately, because British nationalism in Scotland, while exactly the same thing, takes on a slightly different form; that of Scottish unionism. While in England, British nationalism is entirely devoted to pushing the agenda of a Britain in which ‘there ain’t no black in the union jack,’ in Scotland – as it is in Ireland and Wales, unionists have the added burden of fighting a culture war to keep their nations British.
The Drunkard of Europe
Responding to Black Lives Matter protesters who pulled down a statue of a slave trader – a slave trader for fuck’s sake, the Prime Minister used the term ‘thuggery,’ a term that has been used to describe and dehumanise young black men in the United States; exposing them to the violence of the police officers of a racist state and the reason these protests are taking place in the first place. But we don’t expect any better from Johnson, do we? – the man who thought it just swell to recite the putrid racism of Kipling in a Myanmar temple and denigrate British Muslim women.
Damnation of Memory
We should be interested to note too that the statue of him which was torn down was not erected until 1846 – some 174 years after his death, during the reign of Victoria – ‘the famine queen.’ Statues are rarely set up to celebrate people. Even though it is a person on the pedestal, if it were the case that great people were memorialised in this way simply because of their greatness or their contribution to their community, city, or nation, we would not be able to move for statues. There just is not enough bronze in the world. Such statues are erected to glorify ideas and ideals...
Random Public Journal 