Galloway - Plays the Sectarian Card Once Again

"I’ll tell you what would happen when an independent Scotland proved to be a chimera. Scots would turn inwards, turn on the English and turn on each other. First they would come for the ‘unionists’ as they describe people like me. We would become a ‘fifth column’. Soon other scapegoats would have to be found. Catholic schools, judging by the cyber-nats-speak, would have to succumb. Then it might be the immigrants, brown as well as white who would be ‘taking our jobs’, ‘our houses’, ‘marrying our women’ and the rest. We would become an embittered people, the very opposite of the Scottish internationalist we have been for so long"  George Galloway, Red Molluca, 19th May, 2013

Sound familiar? The same shit spouted on Twitter by my bother Ian Smart in his disasterous Twitter foray barely a week ago. I am just waiting for Jack McConnell to directly join in: He is supportive enough to re-tweet their musings.

Because it is no co-incidence that these old chums spout the same smear. Their evidence-free and baseless assertions come from failed generation of Scottish Labour activists who, having delivered near nothing - but managing to enrich themselves in the process - will now spend their later years attacking all things nationalist. The irony is though, nationalism was a horse they themselves were happy to ride, until the good people of Scotland clocked they could do better than be led by these self-serving poseures, who only played the card to gain them some tactical leverage in their internal battles within the Labour Party. Self-determination for them always meant to be on their terms and within parameters of the British labour movement.

This more than anything else explains their later day extreme unionism, so extreme that even the Better Together campaign has all but disowned them: I do wish though Better Together would just do this in quite unequivocal terms. Tell them this is just unacceptable. Slap them down, so as the rest of us can have a sensible debate on Scotland future, uncontaminated by these sad and time-warped sectarians. How about it, Alastair?

Because as I said in my last blog about my brother, this stuff really is the gutter. The politics of Enoch Powell: Stir up a sectional fear for a cheap headline and narrow political gain, not remotely thinking through the potential implications and consequences of your spoutings.

Galloway's latest article is written under the pretext of defending Nigel Farage's right to free speech, following the over-zelous harassment of him by members of the Radical Independence Conference last week in Edinburgh. Now you can view this incident in a number of ways, and certainly I can think of better ways of combating UKIP in Scotland than confronting its leader having a quite pint in a Royal Mile pub. But Galloway don't just make that point, but rather goes into altogether murkier territory, which amounts to a smear on the entire national movement in Scotland.

We are told "cybernats" - and I presume I am one - are " the mirror image of the Faragists"  But he get worse.....

"It was once said that anti-semitism was the socialism of fools. So too is the idea that Scotland broken from the rest of this small, island of English- speaking people will somehow lead to some kind of progressive beacon of hope for the world"

So a man who has spent a lifetime dodging the unsupported smear that he is himself anti-semitic, equates supporters of independence, and the left leaning ones in particular, as being little better than anti-semites. Just how low can you go George?

I am kind of aware Galloway's stock in Scotland is now about as low as Farage's - that 2% of the vote in Glasgow in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections took some doing. But I am also aware that beyond Scotland, near universally amongst people who have never worked with him, he retains a significant cult following. So for their benefit, it might be useful to end with a simple list:

Parties in Scotland who support Scottish Independence

The Scottish National Party
The Scottish Green Party
The Scottish Socialist Party
The Socialist Workers Party
The International Socialist Group
Solidarity
The Scottish Republican Socialist Party

Parties in Scotland Who Oppose Scottish Independence

The Scottish Labour Party
The Scottish Liberal Democrats
The Scottish Conservative Party
UKIP
The British National Party
The Scottish Defence League
The Orange Order

Figure that out..........