Brian Wilson in the Sunday Mail yesterday was talking about how a vote for independence will leave behind the poor in the north of England and that somehow if you vote YES you are in fact anti-English, certainly that was the implication I took from the article.
It also got me thinking that I am getting sick of the implication that because I am a YES voter I am somehow anti-English and therefore racist.
Margaret Curran has made comments that in the event of a YES vote “My son would be a foreigner” and also that she is “Uncomfortable with the thought that he is now a foreigner” because he attends university in England.
Alistair Darling giving a lecture on the union notes that “apart from meaning that your friends in Wales, your family in England and your workmates from Northern Ireland will, effectively and overnight, become foreigners, independence also signals the loss of things that we so readily identify with and cherish”.
Johann Lamont in her conference speech noted that “We didn’t have to suffer the indignity which some of our neighbours had, seeking bailouts from foreign governments”.
For the Scottish branch of the Labour Party it seems they have a real issue with foreign people, we know they are now the tartan Tories but they might actually be tartan UKip in disguise.
However, I really resent the implication every time some of them open their mouths that somehow if I vote YES I am either anti-English, anti-non British person or just plain old racist.
My YES vote has absolutely nothing to with race, it has nothing to with England in the main, or even the EU, it has everything to do with a corrupt and broken political system that promotes privilege and promotes London at the cost of everything else. This vote is an opportunity to begin a process where we not only assert our right to control our own futures, whichever nationality we might be, but also the opportunity to start to clean up everything.
It’s time for a political system that reflects the votes cast, it’s a chance for ordinary members of political parties to end the never-ending political careerist politicians that have infected our system and bring nothing to the table other than greed and a sense of their own importance. It is a chance at a constitution that reflects the will of the people, of ethical business, of a nuclear free Scotland and of a chance to try to make sure that every single person in Scotland has opportunity and dignity.
My message to Labour and to Better Together is that they need to stop the implication that YES voters are somehow racist, that’s the feeling I get when I hear the comments and it is not on, you are actually at risk of becoming the very thing you accuse me of being by implication.
I deserve better, Scotland deserves better, we certainly don’t deserve Labour in Scotland or Better Together.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
When Scotland becomes independent,the supporters of British neo-liberalism will not be so much foreigners as aliens.
Alien to our culture and thinking.
I personally think many of them are from another planet but that is open for debate.
Bringiton
They are unreal aren’t they. Their brand of nationalism is a narrow minded xenophobic right wing nightmare but YES voters by implication are racist. How dare we wish to assert our rights how dare we want to be something better.
They are so afraid of their hold over the poor and brainwashed being worn away, so afraid of losing their privileges. The sooner we are out of this horrid union the better.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Excellently put. Once upon a time, Labour claimed to be internationalist, whatever they might have understood that to mean. Now, they have a UKIP-like obsession with foreigners, starting with Thazzaband at the UK Labour conference bleating on about it, and the cheerleaders all chiming in. I wish they could understand that foreigners, whatever they might understand by that, aren’t necessarily scary. I have even met some. They didn’t kill then eat me, and I survived to tell the tale. Listening to Labour has become like listening to some bitter malcontent who doesn’t like anything new – like Simon Heffer, maybe?
Iain
I find it all really offensive to be honest, my wife is from Ghana and my children are mixed race and it really annoys me that they use the term to instill a warped type of fear. Unreal.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
The Lead campaigner in this area of D & G is from Wimbledon… and a significant number of hard working activists who throw their energy and time in supporting the YES campaign are from various Shires and Counties of England… so…. the no crew are using every LOW trick they can run with in their desperate attempts to stop the inevitable…
Scot
They really are but it is totally offensive, can you imagine the uproar if the YES Camp were doing this.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
There is no doubt that of the may strong arguments for Scottish self-determination, the one of getting out of a broken, elistist Westminster is the strongest. Even a significant number in England and certainly a majority in Northern England would sign up to that. That is a major problem for Labour who are intrinsically linked to the priveleges of Westminster, especially the gravy train of spads to MPs to Lords. They are the true foreigners (from another planet).
Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Every time I heard Gordie Boy claim to have ended boom and bust I shuddered. The bigger the boom the bigger the bust.
The ironic thing is that he did history at uni did he not. I presume that did not include a history of economics.
bjsalba
Politics and history seems to be the stable of the modern politician, everything I hate about the party and selection system. We have allowed ourselves to create a new royalty, I mean Labour are trying to find Tony Blairs son a safe seat for next year. Talk about a sense of entitlement, they all make me sick and when the YES vote happens we have to force them to change it all.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce