Let me cut to the chase. I’m frankly sick and tired of the xenophobia, racism, sectarianism, little Englander, little Scotlander mindset that seems to prevail right now. It’s not just on our doorstep that this is happening either.
Everywhere one looks there seems to be a "them and us" cancer infecting the way so many people conduct their lives, view politics, sport, and the way business is done.
The EU referendum, football hooliganism, the Orlando massacre all are examples of suspicion, divisiveness, fear and loathing unleashed worldwide.
When did this fear of others and of things different become so universally prevalent and poisonous?
So often these days the response to any crisis or problem across the world seems to be a shunning of others. Kill them, banish them or pull up the drawbridge and ladder in the face of the "threat" they pose seems to be the knee-jerk reaction.
So much of society home and away seems gripped by some panicked, desperate, pathetic need to cut itself off from the travails, problems and legitimately-held views of others.
It doesn’t matter who they might be, refugees, migrants, the unemployed, homeless, company employees or simply those that wear different football colours.
I’m all right Jack, is the order of the day, epitomised this week by the loathsome arrogance of Sir Philip Green, the former owner of BHS.
He snarled with contempt at the members of a parliamentary inquiry who had the temerity to ask why his cavalier business dealings led to a company collapse leaving 11,000 people’s jobs and pensions at risk to the tune of £571 million.
“Sir, do you mind not looking at me like that all the time, it’s really disturbing,” Sir Philip demanded of one MP before sneeringly asking the others; “Are we in the same room?”
Just who does this man think he is? The fact he is being grilled over his mercenary business dealings that left thousands out of work and their lives turned upside down is only right and absolutely necessary.
Lin Macmillan, a former BHS employee who is now running an online petition on behalf of other workers at the company, has hit the nail on the head with her campaign slogan: “Sell the yachts and pay the pensions.”
Others too of the same ilk as Sir Philip, of which there is no shortage in our business and banking sector, should likewise be taken to task.
For people like Sir Philip, someone else of course is always to blame. In his case it’s the little people "stupid" enough to pay tax. For others it’s the foreigners, immigrants or someone, anyone else.
“Give me my country back,” says the bleating campaign slogan on so many of the Brexiteers placards and posters. But just who exactly has robbed them of "their" country? How many of us actually know someone who wakes up in the morning with a take on the world shaped by the belief that the EU, immigrants or anyone else, has robbed them of the land they live in.
If political theft is to be a rallying cry then it should be directed at those seemingly hell-bent on robbing us of the democratic values of tolerance, compassion and reaching out that so many have fought and sacrificed everything for.
Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. All those years ago people in the South African township rose up in protest against the apartheid regime and a decree that all pupils must learn Afrikaans in school.
When South African police opened fire on marching schoolchildren more than 170 were to die that day on June 16, 1976. This was a stark example of what racism, division, separation, segregation truly means.
For many South Africans and indeed Scots and others I knew who were anti-apartheid campaigners and activists at that time, those events marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid system.
Across the world many people woke up to what the cancer of a "them and us" mentality really meant and the profound consequences that can follow.
Here in Scotland, I’m proud to say we more than played our part in that campaign against apartheid. As ever there were those who wanted to pull up the political drawbridge but they failed,
Perhaps Scotland's greatest reward for allying itself with the fight against apartheid is the collective sense of national decency such a positive role engendered.
In opposing apartheid, Scotland revealed itself as a nation capable of displaying the qualities needed in laying claim to be a tolerant, caring and multicultural society.
All this was born out of a great tradition of political internationalism, something that still exists in Scotland today as it does elsewhere in the UK. But that tradition faces fresh challenges from those who fear reaching out or embracing people or ideas from beyond our shores.
Being in or out of Europe is not going to change the simple fact that war, repressive regimes, environmental catastrophe and global economic inequalities, will ensure people stay on the move in the hope of finding something better.
Time and again I’ve worked in parts of the world where people live on a few dollars a day. Is it actually realistic to expect such people not to move in search of making a better life for themselves?
Let’s not forget that all too often it has been our own dark and disturbing colonial past, or recent foreign military adventures that in great part have been responsible for many of those people on the move seeking sanctuary today.
For decades now the British political class has refused to engage cohesively and imaginatively with the issue of immigration. Now we find the response to that issue rearing its often ugly head at the centre of a debate and referendum on our participation in the (EU).
As someone who thinks of himself as an internationalist, I’m under no illusions about the double standards of the EU.
Why for example is it that our wealthy neighbours are often more deserving of our trade than some of the most deprived countries on earth? Too often also its seems perfectly acceptable to use shared European wealth to coerce developing countries into signing political agreements.
These are undoubtedly deficiencies within EU political and economic practice, and there are many others. They can best be overcome however
by working with others inside that institution not cutting us adrift.
As far back as 1956, Jimmy Porter, the anti-hero of John Osborne’s seminal play Look Back in Anger lamented: “There aren’t any good, brave causes left.”
He was wrong. There are still plenty out there worth fighting the good fight for. Combatting the "them and us" cancer and fear and loathing so prevalent today is one of them.
Promoting a universal sense of tolerance, compassion and cooperation is not just idealistic pie-in-the-sky thinking. All are internationalist values more than ever worth sticking up for
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