I have been much criticised for referring to Unionists – and No voters are precisely Unionists – as evil or stupid. I have given this much thought, as a number of very well-intentioned people have urged me to apologise. After a great deal of angst, I have decided to offer a heartfelt apology. Not all Unionists are Evil or Stupid. Some are just Cowards. There, I think that covers it.
My analysis runs thus:
Evil
The United Kingdom has become a force for ill in the World. In invading Iraq against the express wishes of the UN Security Council, Blair and Bush did to the United Nations what Hitler and Mussolini did to the League of Nations. The UK was up to its neck in complicity with extraordinary rendition and torture. Its foreign policy is based on resource grabs for the benefit of a few wealthy corporations. Even this year it is in Court still defending the atrocious deportation of the entire population of Diego Garcia to make way for a US airbase, and still preventing their return. It is actively preparing to do the same to the Ascension Islanders. It supports the hideous dictatorship of Bahrain and was implicated in the overthrow of Egypt’s only elected government by the CIA’s General Sisi. It constantly works against the interests of the Palestinians at the UN.
This week the UK has been passing still more laws attacking fundamental liberties in the name of “counter-terrorism” and increasing surveillance. It has an economy dedicated entirely to the interests of very wealthy people in the City of London. Its wealth gap between rich and poor is massive and still growing. The UK has 100 billionaires, and malnourished children, living on a small island. It is dominated by corporations run on a low wage model and has systematically destroyed workers’ rights.
On balance, the government of the UK has become a force for evil in the world. not a force for good. To support it in full knowledge of the above is evil.
Stupid
Given the existence of the tremendous communications possibilities of the internet, and given the wide range of information available above all in Scotland where a new political consciousness has developed, there are few excuses for having been ill-informed in the referendum. The failure to inform oneself, given the resources available, was itself evidence of a lack of gumption.
Some people are Unionists not because they support the policies outlined under Evil, but because they fail to perceive them. This group overlaps heavily with those who do not believe the Labour Party is now a fully paid up neoconservative party subscribing to everything above, and with only a sham concern for social justice. Despite the Red Tories’ open pledges to be tougher on welfare reform and immigration than the Blue Tories, these stupid people believe social progress is possible within the UK under Labour. They also actually believed that The Vow on Devo-Max would be delivered. This group of Unionists are incapable of perceiving evil when they see it, even when it comes certified with membership of the Henry Jackson Society. These people are stupid.
Cowardly
I have added this last group. These are people who did perceive the evil of the UK, and thus weren’t entirely stupid, but were too scared of social change to abandon unionism. A substantial section of the cowards should in fact be grouped under evil, because the cause of their fear was entirely self-centred. They could see the evil the UK does, but cared rather more about their own pension, job, mortgage etc. than they cared about anything else in the world. This combination of selfishness and fear of social change is of course classically Tory. But not all cowards fell into the Tory category. Some were genuinely fearful that things might somehow get even worse for everybody. They would not have boarded the first trains in case their heads were blown off by the 30mph winds.
Conclusion
After four months of constant thought, I cannot think of any hypothetical unionist position which does not fall into one of those categories. I am grateful for the criticism which led me to realise that I had left out the cowards. Some of that criticism came from nationalists who do not like politics to be described in moral terms, and for whom national independence should rouse no more passion than a change in local council boundaries, being a simple question of the best technocratic management of broadly similar political systems. That is a position I wholeheartedly denounce. For me national independence for Scotland is a great ethical choice for good – and against evil.
Fortunately a great many of the stupid are realising their mistake – being slower on the uptake does not stop you getting there eventually. So now there is a definite majority, for Yes. I am pleased about this, and view Independence as absolutely inevitable in the near term. I shall certainly live to see it. I don’t see converting No voters as part of my personal mission in life. The Wizard of Oz could give the Coward a medal and the Stupid a diploma. I shall content myself with being the one who throws water over the Evil.
Finally, for those who cannot get their heads round the purpose, style and conventions of political polemic, plainly you don’t have to be a No voter to be stupid. I have No voters in my family and among very close friends, including some without whose assistance I couldn’t keep this blog going. An attempt to introduce intellectual rigour into political discussion and test positions as part of political debate in no sense equates to personal animosity. As I have repeatedly stated in the context of the hundreds of political issues this blog has debated over ten years, I do not choose my friends by their politics. Otherwise I guess I wouldn’t have any 🙂 !
“Scotland had a chance to upset the repressive neo-con world order”
A bit difficult when you’re a member of NATO and the European Union and are in a currency union with the UK. It’s not only No voters who are unionists.
Scotland had a chance to upset the repressive neo-con world order. It was wrong on so many levels not to take that chance.
I had to shout from the roof-tops – must be the most ardent and profound nuance this year 2015.
Thank-you
Tony M @ 12.24 pm . I have two comments. First, I was implicitly agreeing with Craig that there should be room for mischief and fun in politics (especially at general elections).
Second, I agree that there was much pillage and malarkey in these “debatable lands”. (see
http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=isleoflewis;id=38;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eborderreivers%2Eco%2Euk%2F).
However, the term now has the same swashbuckling associations as do pirates and Long John Silver. So I think many would be prepared to ride out with Craig to plunder votes; and that few would see a 21st century “Border Reivers” party as one which had a common platform with Somali pirates or ISIS assassination squads. (Did you ever see the fine John Arden play about Johnny Armstrong? – see
http://www.4-wall.com/authors/authors_a/arden_john/armstrong.html
@Duncan
I’m not political. Those Unionists you talk of are a small minority in the Central Belt where sectarian conflict is rife and is as much a result of Nationalism as Nationalism is a result of Unionism the two cancers feed off each other.
We used to have a good hospital with good doctors when it was governed by Westminster but since the health service was devolved it has gone down hill fast and I fear it will be lost. That and many other factors which affect me personally are what influence me not ideologies.
I didn’t support the Iraq war I opposed it, I had no part in imposing sanctions on the Iraqis, I didn’t even vote Labour or Conservative I’m just someone who wants a sound and secure future for the people of Scotland and if Craig thinks that makes me evil then what does it make those who did impose those sanctions?
Craig only really made one error; it is one nearly all of us make every day, and one Craig himself advises against in the comment threads. He broke the rule:
Or as Craig advises regarding commenting:
Craig should have said that arguments and reasons for voting No were either evil, cowardly or stupid.
fred, 2:27 pm
The same thing has been happening all over the UK. It shows up worse in Caithness as you had a lower population and less hospitals to start with.
Lol @ Netanyahu re tweet, Mary. Wasn’t Bibi attending something to do with free speech in Paris? #jesuisdavidward…eh, what?
“Fred You may think it a cheap response, but as I remember, Hitler was elected.”
No, in the 1932 elections Hitler received 38% of the vote Hindenburg 53%.
Hitler took power on the death of Hindenburg then burnt down the Reichstag building and blamed it on the Communists in order to exclude left of centre parties from subsequent elections.
Fred will no doubt be desolated to learn of an increase in NHS Highland’s funding:
http://www.strathspey-herald.co.uk/News/More-money-for-NHS-Highland-12012015.htm
It’s in the P&J, too (paywall)
Ms Robison* said: “Despite Scotland’s fiscal resource budget being slashed in real terms by 10 per cent by Westminster since 2010, we’ve increased the health resource budget by 4.6 per cent in real terms.
*SNP
Ok, money isn’t everything. But it’s something.
fred :“We used to have a good hospital with good doctors when it was governed by Westminster but since the health service was devolved it has gone down hill fast and I fear it will be lost.”
I’ve challenged you on this before but you didn’t answer.
Do you believe the NHS in Scotland is worse than in England, and if so, on what grounds?
“The same thing has been happening all over the UK. It shows up worse in Caithness as you had a lower population and less hospitals to start with.”
They’re building a new hospital in Glasgow, South Glasgow University Hospital due to be completed this year. They’re getting new hospitals in England, London, Cambridge, Birmingham.
Jim Murphy didn’t turn up at Westminster yesterday to vote with the Tories for £30bn of austerity cuts, like 28 of his Scottish Labour colleagues did. That’s because he was taking some Scottish journalists to lunch to explain an important thing to them.
Mad Murphy claims he’s not a unionist, well he was only a unionist, during the Scottish referendum, and now its over, well you get the picture. No Murphy claims he’s a unionist as in supporting the trade unionist movement.
Yet not one single union backed his bid for leader of the Scottish branch of London Labour.
Murphy is trying to win back supporters from the SNP, by claiming to be a socialist politician with a socialist agenda, quite a difficult thing to do when you’re a member of the right wing think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
Even the unions think of Murphy as a right wing Blairite.
“I’ve challenged you on this before but you didn’t answer.
Do you believe the NHS in Scotland is worse than in England, and if so, on what grounds?”
Oddly enough I haven’t spent too much time travelling round Britain inspecting hospitals. However I know what it was like here before and I know what it’s like now.
http://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/News/Fresh-blow-for-Caithness-General-30122014.htm
Fred – health service went downhill from the time PFI hospitals started to be completed and replace non-PFI ones. Just happened that that happened at the same time as devolution. Major and the tories started it, but under Blair and Brown not one hospital was given Treasury funding unless it was a PFI (or PPP – renamed because public private partnership sounded nicer)
The NHS in England is in an even worse state because there were no devolved parliaments there to stop Labour and tory UK governments privatising it as much as they could get off with without the public noticing. New Labour and Conservative plan is to contract out all NHS services to private firms and just have NHS as a “kitemark” to “reassure healthcare consumers”. See Professor Allyson Pollock’s book ‘NHS PLC’ and also the book ‘The Plot Against the NHS’ (i forget the names of the authors of it).
Most shamefully of all not only Conservative but also Labour Health ministers in the last Labour government, on leaving government took jobs as paid advisers to some of the same private healthcare firms they’d contracted out NHS services to (e.g Patricia Hewitt and Alan Milburn)
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/may/17/labour-ministers-consultancy-private-sector
Thing is too Iain, there already is or was a ‘Borders Party’, in recent years some paleo-conservative Nicholas Watson or similar and maybe some hangers-on, closet Tories, obessesed with stopping the (painfully limited*) Waverley Line re-opening. A ‘party’ long and understandably suspected of links with road haulage, road-building and bus operator interests. Though only active I think on the Scottish side of the Border, the name ‘Borders Party’ still has unpleasant local assosciatons, with a very combative, obstructive and prima-donna form of politics at local council SBC and community council level.
(*e.g. Hawick to Edinburgh by public transport in 1914: 1 hour 33 minutes – Hawick to Edinburgh by public transport in 2014-: 2 hours 20 minutes)
I know we’re only debating a name rather than the idea, I’m not opposing the idea, much, just seeing difficulties. The best advice and proposals, the only valid ones, must surely come from those in the Berwick constituency (which I’m not) likely to be asked to support and vote for hypothetically, Craig Murray, on the grounds he’s not any one of, LibLabCon, and can put the whole area, on both sides of the Border, in the UK national spotlight for the first time perhaps in 400 years, and this time not not for lawlessness beyond the control of both English and Scottish ‘authority’.
Besides which the East Marches, abutting and including part of the Berwick constituency being discussed, were relatively quiet in 17thC Border terms, most of the Reiving and mayhem action once family clan structures broke down, took place in the West Marches, the Middle Marches, and the lawless “Disputed Territories” that lay between, so would the Reivers name have all that much resonance out Berwick way?
I’m in no position to gauge the level of support such a GE candidacy would attract, unlike East Renfrewshire where I was sure it would have been harmful in vote terms to the SNP candidate there and be unlikely to create much more than a ripple itself, electorally there, even if it would have turned Jim Murphy an unfetching shade of puce.
I prefer to sit uncomfortably on the fence, observing than trying to affect events or taking any strong position. It could mean more ordure heaped on Craig by the SNP itself.
The buffoon with the Caeseresque haircut, aka the Chancer of the Exchequer, Gideon Osborne (Possibly the worst in UK history)has taken credit for the fall in the cost of goods.
New figures from the (ONS) released figures showing everyday goods are cheaper, experts said the fall was due to declining oil prices, (a situation outwith, Gideon’s control).
Gullible Gideon, not one to miss an opportunity to look competent (A impossible task) said, “We have family budgets going further, and the economic recovery is now being widely felt,this is proof that our long term economic plan is working.”
Gullible Gideon if elected in May is planning extensive austerity cuts, no doubt, this will already knock more poor people for six.
Bring back Alistair Darling, at least he admitted he didn’t see the recession of 2008 coming.
Osborne’s “pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded” approach to the UK’s economic problems will see many many years of austerity and stagnation, dog the UK.
Scotland must cut loose the ball and chain that is Westminster.
Prepare for “debt deflation” I wonder if gullible Gideon is.
A cross party group of MP’s are trying to force a vote, at Westminster calling for the much delayed Chilcot report, to be published before the General Election.
The debate over Chilcot will take place on Jan 29th, and surprisingly Jack Straw will speak at it, said Tory MP David Davis.
David Cameron said last week that the report was largely finished, and that it (the report) was going through the “Maxwellisation” process.
Me : “Do you believe the NHS in Scotland is worse than in England, and if so, on what grounds?”
Fred “Oddly enough I haven’t spent too much time travelling round Britain inspecting hospitals. However I know what it was like here before and I know what it’s like now.”
I can only interpret that as a “don’t know.”
Question 2 : Do you have any grounds for claiming the SNP apportion a smaller fraction of their NHS Scotland budget on the Highlands than Westminster did?
They may be Stupid, Evil, or Cowardly (SEC) but they are your SEC and you NEED them to come over to your side. Attacking them alienates them and forces them to defend their position (with a little help from your enemies). You will catch more SEC flies with honey than vinegar.
Steady. Have a cold shower, a bowl of soup, back off , don’t throw your toys out and let their fear be forgotten.
You are right but you want to win them over.
health service went downhill from the time PFI hospitals started to be completed and replace non-PFI ones. Just happened that that happened at the same time as devolution.
Maybe even before. There was a phase of consolidation under Thatcher, which closed a lot of useful distributed local units and replaced them with single hospitals, whose services were far from equalling the sum of the services it replaced.
They’re getting new hospitals in England, London, Cambridge, Birmingham. And they won’t be any better than the old ones, and they’ll cost the taxpayer three times or more what they would have done before PFI…releasing less cash for actually treating anyone. Then the contractor will find he’s not being kept in the style to which he would like to be accustomed, and reneges on the deal…
http://www.hinchingbrooke.nhs.uk/
It works like this:
http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/regional/11614734.print/
Circle, which gets a namecheck there, has just dropped Hinchinbrooke…
“Question 2 : Do you have any grounds for claiming the SNP apportion a smaller fraction of their NHS Scotland budget on the Highlands than Westminster did?”
I have grounds to claim that the SNP are in charge and they should be spending time putting it right not looking for somebody to blame. They are the government, we want doctors not excuses.
I thought these pictures were, rather touching, especially with the added caption.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/1/11/je-suis-gaza
Duncan
I am really concerned that you choose to whitewash the Jewish Zionist Israelis whoever they are, and they are not all the same of their crimes. I hope this blog survives long enough for history to prove you damningly and unforgiveably wrong.
I see that you are impregnable in your belief that crops up here from time to time that everything can be explained by economics.
It can’t but you are in the majority on this forum. Even Craig is reluctant to peep through the net curtains of Zionist hate crime against Islam. A one-way view, a lop-sided version of the reality on the ground.
You mentioned that the rebel movement in Syria has prevented Western colonial expansionism. No they just buy the oil from the terrorists, their own political pawns like ISIS.
Just because the Iraqis and Syrians receive nothing doesn’t mean the neo-colonialism is not still proceeding smoothly for them through terrorists and sponsors of terrorism like Netanyahu and Erdogan.
I am very uncomfortable that such entrenched establishment thinking has been expressed on this blog. You have many frioends, Habbabkuk, Resident Dissident, Anon. Craig doesn’t choose his friends by their political opinions.
You’re probably right there Ba’al – Thatcher did bring in “internal market reforms” in the NHS.
I wish all the leeches would pull out of their contracts so we could be rid of the lot of them.
Fred “I have grounds to claim that the SNP are in charge and they should be spending time putting it right not looking for somebody to blame. They are the government, we want doctors not excuses.”
So you’re not claiming that the NHS in Scotland is worse than in England, or that it spends proportionally less on the Highlands than Westminster did. So why do you believe Caithness NHS services would be better NOW under Westminster than the SNP?
Giyane – The only way in which i know Habbabuk and the rest is the same way you do, through us all posting on Craig’s blog.
From what i’ve read in the newspapers and online news i think you’re right that NATO countries only placed sanctions on buying oil from or selling arms to the Syrian government and not rebel groups, most of which commit just as many murders and massacres of civilians, and pretty much all of which are Sunni sectarian groups who murder Alawites, Shia, Christians etc. I agree that it’s wrong to buy oil from these groups or sell them arms. US government has been talking about sanctions on anyone who buys oil from ISIS, but no mention of other rebel groups.
Should correct that – I met Sam, Craig and Iain when i was campaigning with them for Craig in Norwich, but Habbabuk and most of the rest i’ve never met.
“So you’re not claiming that the NHS in Scotland is worse than in England, or that it spends proportionally less on the Highlands than Westminster did. So why do you believe Caithness NHS services would be better NOW under Westminster than the SNP?”
What I said was that the NHS here is crap now and that is the responsibility of the SNP. I’m saying a small amount of that £440 million the SNP underspent last year would have helped provide some staff for our hospital. That £2.5 million they spent on the independence propaganda White Paper would have paid for a few doctors and change.
OK, DO you think Caithness NHS services would be better off NOW under Westminster than the SNP?
I think you’ll find that the NHS problems has little to do with underspend and more to do with “consultant” Doctors resigning.The money is there if the doctors would only stay.
You’re not scaring them away by any chance Fred with your stories of marching Nazi’s in your neighbourhood are you?