Mark Smith: Calm down everyone – the ‘Tory scum’ protests weren’t all that bad

On the face of it, it tells us politics in Scotland is nasty. I probably don’t need to go over all the details again but basically there was a Tory leadership debate in Perth and a small group of protesters gathered behind a banner with the familiar phrase on it. Some of them spat at old people and some of them abused the BBC reporter James Cook. No doubt about it: it was unpleasant.

But we need to ask whether this kind of stuff is particularly new or even uniquely Scottish and to that end let me tell you about some other protests. In one case, all kinds of abuse and foodstuff were thrown at a Tory politician and in another the severed heads of six chickens were sent to a woman who criticised public sector strikes. A hearse was also sent to her home to “pick up her body”.

This is nasty stuff but the first point to make is that it happened in 1981. The abuse, and the eggs, were thrown at Margaret Thatcher when she visited factories in Forfar, Renfrew, Cumnock, and other places. In Forfar, about 400 protesters gathered at the Don Brothers Buist carpet factory and it was double that number at the James Howden plant at Renfrew. Eggs, flour, and colourful Scottish vocabulary were thrown. At one point, the PM’s security team was itchy about whether they would get out unscathed.

In a leader published in September 1981, The Herald expressed its shock at the protests. Throwing eggs and verbal abuse at the Prime Minister, it said, was vile and unproductive in a mature democracy. There was already too much violence in our society, it went on, and the essence of the Left should be fraternity and the belief that the persuasions of the just majority will prevail. Tolerance must be part of that, said The Herald.

The leader said something else interesting as well. The trend towards violence in politics, it said, was exemplified not only by the Scottish protests but by another shocking case: the case of Mrs Sue Harris. Mrs Harris, it said, was a nursing officer who criticised NHS strikes. She later found the severed chicken heads on her desk and the hearse with the sinister message. The point to make here is that Mrs Harris lived in Chester.

What I’m saying, in case it isn’t already obvious, is that nasty, personal, abusive and occasionally violent political protest is nothing new and it’s not uniquely Scottish – far from it. There has always been a minority who go too far. There have also always been commentators in the media – and far be it from me to disagree with an esteemed Herald colleague from the past – who have declared it part of an alarming new trend when it isn’t really.

Naturally, we need to talk about one particular element of the protests which is the abuse aimed at the BBC reporter James Cook. This has real effects: I’ve mentioned before my colleague who saw a therapist because of the vilification they’d received from SNP supporters, including ministers, and the effect it had on his self-confidence. I’ve also written about the abuse Sarah Smith received and the part Nicola Sturgeon played in stirring that pot. The First Minister has a responsibility to think twice before she criticises the media and her public support for Mr Cook is – perhaps – a sign that she’s learned her lesson.

As for the rest of us, we also have a responsibility, which is to keep what’s going on in Scottish politics in perspective. When those anti-Tory protests happened in 1981, Mrs Thatcher stayed characteristically calm. Of the protesters in Renfrew, she said they had every right to demonstrate. Of the protest in Forfar, she said it didn’t bother her at all. “People who shout most have the least argument and that’s why they shout,” she said. And of the egg throwing incident, she said: “They have eggs to throw? What a terrible waste of eggs.” It was that rare thing: Mrs Thatcher making a joke (I think).

There are lots of lessons we can pick up from all of this. Unquestionably, those pictures the other day of the protesters in Perth, teeth bared and fingers jabbing, were unpleasant, but there weren’t very many of them to be honest and to anyone who follows Scottish politics, some of their faces were very familiar. In other words, this is a small minority within a minority who consistently go too far rather then necessarily a sign of some kind of bigger, poisonous trend.

We should also accept the right that people have to get very furious indeed about the Tories. I live near one of the factories Mrs Thatcher visited in 1981 (it shut a very long time ago) and there’s still a lot of anger in the area at what they see as the damage she did to the local industry. Very few threw eggs or whatever at the time, but as Mrs Thatcher herself said, they have the right to demonstrate and they have the right to get very angry. Their modern equivalent also have the right to shout rude words in Perth and unfurl their favourite banner emblazoned with the two-word phrase that has surely become tautologous for them by now.

None of this means I’m denying the changes that have happened to Scotland, Scottish politics and political dialogue since the independence referendum – all I’m saying is that in the face of people screaming “Tory scum”, the rest of us should stay calm and keep it in perspective. Politics and protest, sometimes turns nasty – always has done, always will. On the whole, however, people are reasonable.

For example: I was stopped by a reader recently while I was out for a run. He told me that he disagrees with almost everything I write. But he did not scream at me or shout rude words. It was a very reasonable conversation between two Scots who disagree with each other. That, I think, is what most of Scotland is like. Always has been, always will be.

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