I’m off on a long-ish bike ride to the North Coast. It’s a slightly damp morning, but a pleasant 20C. There are summer scents from the hedgerows and gardens. In the quiet of the early morning I become aware that everything around me was once totally foreign — from the now familiar summer fragrances to banal signposts and the gentle landscape.
I missed mountains when I arrived here. I missed the familiar scents of my country, and the language of ma ain folk.
Anyone who’s lived as a long-term exile, goes through a change. It happens very gradually. It takes you unawares. As time passes, trips back to the old country leave you feeling slightly foreign. In the end, returning to exile is almost a relief. Why is my country stuck in a different era? Why are there trees growing out of once beautiful buildings? Why does much of my childhood East End look like a dilapidated dump? Why are people so downcast? After all, it rains in Denmark, too. On this morning after four decades abroad, I realise the scents of my adopted country are now the scents of home.
As an immigrant, I’m probably as integrated into this society as you can be. The question is though, am I now more Danish, or simply a more alienated Scot? After recent political events, I may not be more Danish but I am definitely more alienated than ever from the land of my birth.
How 37 MPs from Scottish constituencies chose to represent a party from another country is incomprehensible. This is especially true when the country whose politics and foreign policy they now support is the Auld Enemy. The ‘Auld’ bit is a little too benign, though. England was, and is still, our enemy. It is a colonial ogre that casts its shadow over every aspect of Scottish life. From the theft of our precious natural resources to the labelling of our Scottish food and drink as ‘British’, to the 24/7 colonial propaganda via a London-centric press and broadcast media. A low-level, though highly incendiary information war has been waged on Scotland for many a year. The forces ranged against us became visible in 2014, and it was the entirety of the British establishment — replete with house-jocks.
The long-term effect of the Auld Enemy’s war against us may be ethnocide. Prof Alf Baird warned during a recent online broadcast, that if current trends continue with settler colonisation and the anglicisation of everything, we may cease to exist as a nation within the next half century.
Church bells are ringing as I pedal through the sleepy village of Tikoeb. These small rural roads I’m on could be in Ayrshire. The difference here is, when you come across small hamlets with a few houses, most are thatched and have no sign of structural neglect or decay. This is in spite of dates such as 1894 just under the eves. The tradition of installing the construction year on buildings, usually with metal numerals, is something I’m rather fond of. It puts things in a kind of historical context. As a history buff, I immediately relate to events that occurred that year.
Dates from the 1890s are always rather poignant as it was the decade during which my grandparents were born. I only ever met one of them, by then living on the Gallowgate. He was a retired tram driver. The tenement’s still there, near the Barras. Those maternal grandparents are long gone to Dalbeth.
This particular road reminds me of a trip to Dalry. I drove there once to see the place where ma Da was stationed during the war. Story goes he was in the home defence, something about him being an anti-aircraft gunner. Why precisely Dalry needed air defence is a mystery to me, and I was none the wiser after my visit. There may have been a local history museum but I didn’t find it.
Truth is, I know far more about the Nazi occupation where I now live. Which houses the Germans took over, what local collaborators did, and how they were arrested and prosecuted when the foreign occupation ended. Speaking of foreign occupation, my sense of alienation from Scotland today is the culmination of a betrayal by my own people. Just as Ireland had its ‘West Brits’ pre-independence, our nation has a glut of North Brits. They’re to be found in Unionist, invariably, English-based parties. Voting for a party based in another country — a country which has been our sole enemy for almost 800 years — is an act of national betrayal that I will never understand. Worse though, is the cynical deception of those in the main nationalist party which is now an English parliamentary career vehicle for grifters. Our best opportunities to end the catastrophic Union with our southern neighbour were handed to them on a plate after 2014. Three majorities of nationalist MPs were a pathway out of our unhappy marriage — a path not taken.
Arriving at the coast, I find my favourite no-name cafe. It’s independent, one of a kind and very non-commercial. There’s gluten-free rolls and no-brand coffee.
Fact is, everything we imagine an independent Scotland could be, Denmark is. Yet, what is also true is that I am, and always will be, a Scot, a foreigner, someone who is asked: ‘I sense a slight accent, are you French? From the Faroe Islands, perhaps?’ It’s rather reassuring, really. I’ve not been completely subsumed.
I’m convinced that our Auld Enemy has played us. Even a superficial knowledge of ‘The Troubles’ reveals that the Irish nationalist movement was infiltrated from top to toe. In her book, ‘The Padre’, Jennifer O’Leary describes the dramatic and disturbing story of Father Patrick Ryan who worked as go-between for the IRA and Colonel Gaddafi. Ryan seems to have believed in liberation theology and was trusted by the Libyan leader who wanted to support liberation movements in their struggle against colonial overlords. Gaddafi was, of course, demonised for this. But he saw no conflict with the UN charter and the inalienable right of all peoples under foreign and colonial domination, not only to self-determination but to resist the occupier.
Father Ryan, however, distanced himself from the IRA leadership believing they were infiltrated to the very top. With the benefit of hindsight we know that the IRA was indeed compromised on so many levels. In fact, its agent, ’Stakeknife’, Frank Scappaticci, was head of internal IRA security and had numerous British-approved terrorist murders on his conscience.
It’s naive in the extreme to imagine that the main nationalist political movement in Scotland has not been thoroughly infiltrated over the years — child’s play for the British state compared to the north of Ireland. Ideally they’d recruit several, particularly someone young, and hope that person quietly moves up the ranks until in a position to do maximum damage. After all, they told us in 2014 that the ‘normal rules do not apply’ if the ‘territorial integrity’ of the United Kingdom is threatened. Therein lies another myth. Each nation of the United Kingdom has its own borders and maritime waters. We never ceded either of those or their vast resources to our neighbour. When they talk of United Kingdom territory, they mean the colonial resources of the Celtic nations of Scotland and Wales.
If the indyref result was a shock for the British establishment, then the election of the 56 in 2015 was a call to action. Anyone who’s been paying attention can see exactly which individuals within the SNP sabotaged both the party and every opportunity to kick the ball towards multiple open goals.
Today I feel ashamed of and anger towards those fellow Scots who have betrayed our nation. They have condemned this and future generations to poverty of body and soul. As someone who grew up in the East End and then on a scheme, politicians were mostly invisible. Those adults around me never discussed politics. Life was about surviving. As long as politicians went to London we could ignore them. But they did more than that. Labour’s feeble fifty enabled and legitimised the illegal theft of our rich territorial assets and resources. They have done this since my teens until the present day. What was a life-changing resource for Norway and other oil-rich nations was stolen from us, Labour hiding the truth from we Scots by burying the McCrone report.
I head down to the harbour for a wee bit of smoked salmon. Here on the front the restoration of the recently closed hospital is ongoing. It started life as a 1930s seaside hotel and is being restored to that purpose once again. You see, this nation can afford to do these things, because it runs its own affairs, administers all of its revenues and territorial resources, has its own currency, and protects its culture and heritage. Yes, independence is entirely normal. Scotland is an outlier among the nations of the world.
The last time the Danes had to deal with collaborators from among their own, punishment was harsh. Those who had helped the southern neighbour plunder the nation were imprisoned, punished financially for war profiteering, or in some cases, shot. In most countries, working for a foreign power against your own nation is a crime. We used to call it treason. Quite a contrast to Scotland, where those who collaborate with our colonial neighbour are rewarded, feted on television and radio, and promoted as our betters. As the English spy Daniel Defoe observed:
“The Union has brought the English Court, to be the centre of all the wealth and ready money of Scotland, which should otherwise have circulated in a home consumption, to the encouragement of trade and enrichment of their own people.
“The Scots will be allowed to send to Westminster, a handful of men who will make no weight whatever. They will be allowed to sit there for form’s sake to be laughed at.”
peteryoung.dk 