Far-right rioting: Why England and not Scotland? 

However, it’s absurd to pretend there’s not something specific about these riots when it comes to England and Northern Ireland. Two questions are outstanding. First, why not Scotland? Secondly, why England and Northern Ireland?

Some convenient myths need addressed. It’s not good enough to blame poverty and ignorance alone. Yes, many street thugs were jobless and uneducated, but many weren’t. There were those in good employment with decent wages, as seen from the charge-sheets of the accused.

If poverty alone was the cause, then Scotland would be in flames too. Wales has also, so far, been exempt, and it isn’t some egalitarian idyll either. Indeed, it’s a gross insult to the working-class to imply racism is down to income.

A police car burns in Hartlepool (Image: free)

During the three decades I’ve investigated the far-right, I’ve meet plenty of well-heeled extremists. Nick Griffin, former BNP leader, studied at Cambridge. And what of the malevolent politicians and rabble-rousing journalists who fed the hate and lies, demonising refugees? Check their CVs: private school and Oxbridge mostly.

Metaphorically, when it comes to far-right extremism, the rich and powerful manufacture the bullets; the poor and uneducated fire them. It’s been ever thus, from the 1920s onward. So class isn’t the central component of race-hate.

This isn’t to say poverty played no part. Poverty can foster resentment. However, class behaves differently in Scotland to England. There’s less deference for a start.

Sublimated deference is humiliating. A false sense of humiliation has always fed fascism - see Nazi myths of Germany’s ‘stab in the back’. So if you’re poor in Scotland - if you fall into that cohort considered vulnerable to the rhetoric of the rich and dangerous - you’re somewhat more sandbagged against this psychological spur.

It isn’t a matter of Scottish exceptionalism to ask why this country has so far been immune. Initially, I was loath to address the question of ‘why not here?’. Indeed, I was short-tempered with some who did, feeling it strayed into narrow nationalism. That was unfair. Despite the discomfort, there are clearly questions to be asked.

However, we mustn’t focus solely on this as some ‘English disease’. I’m Irish and have been shocked by recent racist rioting in Dublin. There’s nothing exceptional in the Celtic air which makes us better people. Is France immune from race-hate? Italy? Hungary? America? No, so we cannot simply blame ‘Englishness’.

What’s true is that both England and Northern Ireland are much more stricken by British nationalism than the rest of the UK. In Northern Ireland, particularly, where I grew up, British identity repeatedly expressed itself violently for over 100 years.

Police pull back in Manchester (Image: free)

As a reporter who specialised in covering the conflict euphemistically known as ‘the Troubles’, it’s clear that loyalist paramilitaries are kissing cousins with English far-right extremists.

What needs explored is the problem of English identity. What does ‘Englishness’ really mean, post-empire? England hasn’t come to terms with becoming simply another middle-ranking nation.

Scotland always defines itself essentially ‘against’ England, but all England can do is define itself against its supposed ‘great past’, leaving its present and future empty and humiliating in the psyche of some. Feeling psychologically wounded and adrift, leads to rage.

Scotland has no great pang for its lost - and very transactional - role as the junior partner in empire.

Historically, the far-right has been more active in England and Northern Ireland than here. In terms of those Irish far-right riots, remember that Ireland had its Blueshirts in the 1930s - hardline religious-inspired fascists who fought for Franco. So there’s legacy there too.

Another legacy matters: Thatcherism. It’s not that Thatcher is a gateway to extremism, it’s more that Scotland’s anti-Thatcherism partially inoculated the nation against Conservatism’s later hard-right drift - which is an extremist gateway.

None of this means we should be blind to the many racists blighting Scotland. The dreadful experiences of former First Minster Humza Yousaf underscore the need for vigilance. However, history, and immigration mechanics, has limited the ability of racists to gain meaningful traction in Scotland.

Over time, Scotland experienced a slower, rolling form of immigration. This allowed Scotland to culturally acclimatise to immigration in a way which didn’t happen in England - thereby reducing the power of racist propaganda.

Read more Neil Mackay

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Ireland - north and south - were, until relatively recently, overwhelmingly white. Racists exploited rapid demographic change to gain some foothold. Evidently, the irony that Ireland is a nation of historic immigration - of Irish people as global migrants - is lost on the island’s racists.

In Scotland, most immigration was into traditionally left-wing Greater Glasgow, where racism - though it surely exists - is primarily not tolerated.

Nor can we disregard this fact: Scotland’s ugliness plays itself out in different ways. There’s hate-mongers in every nation. Here, hate takes shape in mostly low-level but sustained sectarianism.

The constitutional question also allows those who ‘need’ to hate - whether Scottish or British nationalists - to find an outlet not directed towards those of different skin colour.

Scottish nationalism, though, is evidently of a very different stripe to British nationalism. Scottish nationalism actively embraces immigrants.

Devolution - with immigration controlled by Westminster - means race-baiting played no real part in Scottish politics, unlike in England. Nor did Brexit seep poison into Scotland to the extent it did in England, and Northern Ireland where it fed loyalist resentment.

Finally, the Scottish media - mostly - doesn’t engage in the anti-migrant race-baiting of the London press. If Scotland’s media and political landscape is relatively ‘decent’, that limits the trickle-down effect, seen in England where the words of journalists and politicians light fires.

However, a far-right demonstration is planned for Glasgow, with English racists threatening arrival. If it happens, we’ll see homegrown haters there. Scots in the far-right Patriotic Alternative have targeted hotels housing refugees.

But, if rioting should occur, recent events demand such thuggery is seen as an English importation, aided and abetted by a few loathsome Scots with, thankfully, little hold on this country.