Prejudice against Gaelic can be relied on to make occasional appearances in unexpected places. Who would have thought that an intelligent man like Andrew Marr would be moved to express public outrage by a translation of the name Haymarket?

To be fair, and doubtless encouraged by a few friendly flies in his ear, Andrew swiftly recanted, albeit in slightly confusing terms. Anyway, he had come to realise he was “completely wrong” and the signs weren’t really “offensive” or “ridiculous”, so credit where it is due.

I guess Andrew might also have been slightly embarrassed by the calibre of online support his initial remarks attracted. In any other context, they would rightly have been judged racist; the venom of bullies who take pleasure from kicking something they think weak enough not to have a voice.

There is no rational basis for such hostility to a minority language, driven to the edges of survival, which barely impinges upon the life of most Scots. The public money spent in its support scarcely equates to an accounting error. Its public visibility is modest even if some of it, like police cars in Fife, seems a bit pointless. Prejudice towards Gaelic and its use is longstanding and exists solely within Scotland. Nobody else cares. Like many minority languages, it has gradually retreated in the face of hostility and indifference. To the annoyance of its foes, it continues to display resilience.

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The sensible question is how Gaelic can be given a fair chance to survive in those places where it is still in daily use; an objective which requires some degree of public commitment. This has not been a party political issue and the debate should be about means rather than ends. There is no place within it for prejudice.

Equally, any attempt from either fringe to portray attitudes towards Gaelic as an adjunct to the constitutional question is bogus. In the 1980s and‘90s, as any knowledgeable Gaelic activist will confirm, the Tories did a great deal for Gaelic that has not been replicated in more recent times.

I remember being at a meeting in Skye when George Younger, as Secretary of State for Scotland, was persuaded without much difficulty to establish crucial ring-fenced funding to support Gaelic-medium education. I recall hearing his successor, Malcolm Rifkind, explain how his own background gave him an empathy with minority languages.

The Tories established a Gaelic Television Fund in 1991 which was worth £9.5 million a year. If this had been inflation-linked, it would now be worth £25 million. Instead, the Scottish Government’s allocation to BBC Alba has remained frozen for more than a decade and has lost half its value since the channel was created.

For my own part, I wrote a Gaelic policy for the Labour Party in the 1970s which was taken up by the Labour-run regions of the day to embed Gaelic-medium education in cities as well as remaining heartlands. There are people across all parties and none who have delivered whatever they can when in a position to do so and that is a consensus which needs to be maintained. The last thing Gaelic needs is political labelling.

My own commitment is based on two factors. First, it has been around me all my life and second, my socialism tells me that anything which enriches society and communities is generally a good thing, whereas needlessly destroying something precious and irreplaceable is the work of vandals, whatever guise they go under. Most Scots are benign bystanders to that debate but, as with any form of prejudice, it only takes a determined minority to generate a climate of hostility and “othering”.

The road signs complaint is bizarre. I’ve never understood why there would be innate superiority in meaningless phonetics as opposed to names which offer the option of understanding. If the two can exist alongside each other, nobody loses and there is a modest gain for the language of origin. Anomalies are inevitable. But does offence caused by anomalies outweigh respect for meaning and history?

Andrew Marr whipped a storm with his comments on Gaelic signageAndrew Marr whipped a storm with his comments on Gaelic signage (Image: PA)

Again, it is ill-informed to claim the road signs issue arises from some recent political innovation. Over 50 years ago, the pro-Gaelic landowner on Skye, Iain Noble, agreed to convey land in Portree to Inverness County Council for road improvements only on condition bilingual signage was used. The old landed class who ran Highland local government was apoplectic but Iain stood his ground and won. Over the next decade, bilingual signs became public policy with political consensus.

Iain was an interesting figure in many ways. His interest in Gaelic stemmed from knowledge of the Faroe Islands where language revival, reversal of population decline and economic regeneration had gone hand in hand. He believed the same trick could be pulled in Scotland’s west Highlands and Islands.

He tried to put that doctrine into practice at his own hand but the commitment of government was also needed - as it still is today. Gaelic does not exist in a policy silo. The economic and social conditions of the places in which it retains some strength always have been and always will be more relevant to its prospects than any policy which says specifically “Gaelic” on the label.

Without access to land, houses and employment, there are diminishing numbers of people. At this point, the discussion should not be just about Gaelic-speaking communities but rural Scotland as a whole. From Shetland to Galloway, the same challenges exist. Without an integrated policy approach sensitive to local conditions, depopulation will continue.

Holyrood is responsible for most of the issues which are deepening the challenges faced by Gaelic-speaking communities at present, from ferries through housing to the breakdown of crofting regulation. The wrong answers on these issues have done, and will continue to do, more damage to language and culture than the ravings of on-line fanatics.

That understanding needs to be built into every relevant policy and action. It is a message well understood in communities themselves which must survive translation by the time it reaches Edinburgh.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003