Ian Smart, My Brother

My brother Ian Smart is not a racist. He is worse than that. 

A racist is normally someone with a grievance, who out of ignorance, and fuelled by urban and media myths, wrongly blames ethic minorities who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever their problem might be. My brother Ian has few problems, is rather well healed, well educated and mixes amongst the very highest echelons of the Scottish establishment. So when he asserts that there will be some sort of pogrom against the Polish and Pakistani communities (and presumably others) in a post independence Scotland, he is not doing this out of ignorance or prejudice, but out of political calculation. The calculation that if he asserts it loudly and often enough Scotland's ethnic communities and others can be scared into voting No.

This is called playing the race card. It is one of the most dangerous things an individual can do in any context, and of course normally done by politicians of the far right. But for a Labour blogger to do it in Scotland, where there is a hard worked for  and commendable cross-party and cross-society consensus against racial prejudice, and inject it into the highly charge debate on independence is despicable.

No better that Enoch Powell in 1968: Allow fair non racial immigration into the UK and there will be “rivers of blood” he predicted, with no evidence and no basis in reality as events have proven. Vote for Independence in 2014 and my brother predicts something similar for Scotland.

And what has been the reaction of the Scottish Labour establishment to the gratuitous playing of the race card by one of their own? At best silence, and in the case of old chum Jack McConnell supportive. Because sadly, Ian, the leading Labour blogger in Scotland and a regular TV pundit on this basis, is an outrider for more than a few of them.

Apologise and retire. All the advice I can offer.

And Ted Heath sacked Enoch Powell, Johan and co please note.

A Postscript: This is my first blog post here for near on a year, My last one below is on a similar theme. A response to George Galloway playing the Green Card in a near identical context. Same time warped and unsupported bullshit from a washed out "lefty" And hear that silence from the Laborites on both occasions.