THE number of anti-English and anti-Scottish incidents reported to police seems to have increased in the past year, despite figures showing a sharp decrease overall in racism across Scotland.
New figures released by the Scottish Government yesterday, show that offences against some minorities are on the decline, but racist crimes against white English people rose from 80 the previous year to 145 last year, and racist incident against white Scots increased from 350 to 379.
Officials warned the figures do not compare "like with like" as they do not include incidents from the former Grampian police force, while the previous year's do. Data from the old Strathclyde force on victim ethnicity is also missing.
Overall, there has been a 14% fall in race-related crime reported to police over the last 12 months.
Scottish Conservative justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell MSP said: "The overall fall in racist incidents in Scotland is welcome, and compares favourably with other countries. However, I am concerned that amid all the positive statistics is the fact anti-English sentiment appears to be on the increase.
"Although this still accounts for a small proportion of incidents, it is one of very few that is clearly moving in the wrong direction. With that in mind, it is essential as we approach next year's referendum that all sides keep the debate measured and fair."
Community Safety Minister Roseanna Cunningham welcomed the overall fall, but said: "Racism is completely unacceptable and we cannot allow the actions of a minority to spoil this country's reputation as a warm, welcoming, tolerant nation where diversity is valued."
Glasgow topped the table with 20.5 racist incidents per 10,000 people, followed by Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Stirling.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article