David Leask: How can unionism deal with its Gaelophobic fringe?

Mr Cameron was not talking to one side and he was not talking for one side. After all, serious people across Scottish politics have been concerned about the Gaelophobia for years.

“Gaelic has become so highly politicised.” Mr Cameron wrote back in 2018. “Blame for this is shared across the political spectrum, and I certainly don’t exempt my own party from that charge.”

The MSP’s article, however, came with an acerbic aside. He wanted ultras ostensibly on his own side to lay off Gaelic but acknowledged this “may be a forlorn hope given the lingering, tribal bitterness that continues to beset our politics”.

Three years on, Mr Cameron’s pessimism has proven well-placed. Because Scotland’s internet language politics remain toxic, dangerously so.

Some very online Scottish nationalists continue to plaster their social media accounts with Gaelic phrases they can rarely pronounce – and which sometimes (I’m told) make no sense.

Alex Salmond earlier this year launched a party he called Alba – the Gaelic word for Scotland but one the Kremlin TV host did not know how to say properly. Some Gaels suggested this amounted to “cultural appropriation”. They had a point.

But the real problem for Gaels and Gaelic come from unionists, or, more accurately, from the very online and very chauvinistic fringe of British nationalism.

There is nothing new in this. Gaelic’s very existence – even as a marginalised language and culture – seems to trigger those few who see the UK as a single, homogenous nation rather than a diverse state.

Prejudice against Gaels and Gaelic does not come from the internet: it is the hangover of decades, centuries, of active state persecution. But the internet is now where it can be most easily found. And, my Goodness, it is ugly.

Social media brims with bile about a language which is “dead’, “fake” or, in a clearly racist dogwhistle, “Irish”. Bigots rationalise their online abuse by portraying Gaelic as an SNP language, and policies to support the Gaelic-speaking community as “separatist”.

Of course, today’s Gaelic policies predate the current nationalist government: they are mostly the result of a relatively tame unionist law of 2005.

But reality figures little in the fevered world of social media partisans. For example, a preposterous but resilient meme that £26m is spent on road signs in the language is still being shared, years after its sheer ridiculousness was exposed.

As anybody with any common sense will guess, the actual cost of this policy – designed to raise the profile of the language – is so close to nothing it is basically incalculable. Gaelic is simply added to signage as and when it is renewed. The same thing applies to the Poileas Alba transfers now found on cop cars.

Indeed, it was Police Scotland renewing its Gaelic plan – again, under old unionist legislation – that provoked the latest outbursts against the language. The Twitter account of one British nationalist blog last week encouraged its followers to respond to a police consultation on Gaelic. Its advice: unionists should write "use English” whenever asked how to provide services to Gaels.

As experience across Europe has taught us, there is little that triggers linguistic bigots more than seeing the most potent symbol of state power, the police or armed forces, acknowledge a minority.

The latest bout of Gaelophobia on Twitter culminated in a unionist account complaining that men were speaking the language on a Lewis bus. The horror!

There are all sorts of interesting perspectives on the future of Gaelic, especially as a functioning community language in places like the Western Isles (which is one of the reasons cops are talking about where they need to deploy Gaelic speakers).

Smart and well-meaning people disagree on how to best protect the rights of a linguistic minority. We do need space for a reasonable debate. But surely the time for indulging downright bigots over Gaelic is over? Civilised appeals from respectable people like Mr Cameron and his peers have not worked. So what can mainstream unionists do about their intolerant fringe? What should they do?

They face a genuine predicament. It reminds me of mainstream Scottish nationalists facing constant calls to ‘do something’ about cybernats nearly a decade ago.

Some SNP and wider Yes movement figures felt that taking leadership on the issue would mean accepting responsibility – and therefore taking the blame for online abuse.

Others tried to tackle the worst excesses, challenging obtuse or ugly behaviour online. But the movement was essentially crippled by indecision. This had consequences. Many of the original cybernats now support Alba and spit far more poison at the SNP than at pro-UK people.

The British nationalist equivalents of cybernats – cyberyoons – are not just unpleasant about Gaelic. But focusing on language bigotry might be an easy place to start exorcising them from our public life.

Pro-UK mainstream politicians have a lot to gain by distancing themselves from such individuals. After all, Cyberyoons, like cybernats, are off-putting for the still very many Scots who are not 100% convinced one way or another on the constitution.

Most of us, however, will think of tackling bigotry – against any minority – as just the right thing to do.

So let’s see unionist parties and umbrella campaign groups start a conversation about how they can help dampen down Gaelophobia in parts of their base.

What about a campaign of positive messaging about and for Gaelic speakers? How about training for politicians and activists, led by Gaels?

Politicians have to lead on this. They can start by challenging or blocking bloggers and microbloggers who spread disinformation and prejudice about Gaels and Gaelic online. Or even just asking a simple question: what can we do to help fight the bigots?

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