Just For The Record

This is what a “Scottish Defense League” rally outside the Scottish Parliament looks like.

You know how the police usually halve the numbers of any protest: with the SDL I think they double them:

Around 60 members of the Scottish Defence League gathered outside the Scottish Parliament and held a static protest for approximately 45 minutes.

At the same time, 250 members of the Unite Against Fascism group took part in a march from High Street, down St Mary’s Street and along Holyrood Road before holding their own demonstration at the south side of Parliament.

I saw two white minibuses in the car park just outside Holyrood. If those are what the SDL came in, they could have fitted sixty in – but I doubt it.

We are our nation’s own defence against them

What I said:

Whether we vote Yes or No in 2014 is less important to me than whether we can stand up as Scottish together and say to these white nationalists with their notion of “defending Scotland” against diversity, that we are Scotland, and we are our nation’s own defence against them.

Today at 1pm the “Scottish Defence League” will be holding a static rally outside the Parliament.

Now, it is truly difficult for me to see how SDL could be prevented from doing this. The space outside the Scottish Parliament was meant for people to gather and express their views peaceably: I would oppose any law curtailing peaceful protest there or that lets the police presume in advance that a protest will not be peaceable. What we can do is make their rally visibly irrelevant by showing up to peaceably protest against it.

Scotland Says Nae Nazis

Today, the Yes Scotland campaign is having a march. The main reason for the march seems to be so that the march planned for 21st September 2013 is not the first march for independence.

Next Saturday, there will be another march: I expect it to be quite a bit smaller, but much more important. Alex Salmond won’t turn out for it, there won’t be any fancy rally in Princes Street gardens.

Scotland’s languages, Scotland’s people

At the People’s Gathering, in passing, someone said that all official documents in Scotland should be in “all three languages” – English, Scots, and Gaelic.

A sprakh is a dialekt mit en army un flot. – Max Weinreich

These days, it might be said that a language is a dialect with TV programmes and schools. I don’t know how you’d say that in Yiddish. Back when Scotland had an army and a navy, the language spoken through most of Scotland was referred to by its speakers as Inglis – it acquired the name of Scots only when Scotland had ceased to have either. (R.L.G. discusses the Scandinavian languages, which are similiar-but-politically-distinct.)

Lallans exists as a written language: spoken Scots has four main geographic “families”: Insular Scots of Orkney and Shetland; Northern Scots of Caithness, Easter Ross, Moray, Aberdeenshire and Angus; Central Scots of Central Lowlands and South west Scotland; and Southern Scots of the Scottish Borders and Dumfriesshire. (Plus, Scots-Yiddish and Scottish BSL.)

Edinburgh against the SDL

We met in the Grassmarket at noon. It was already hot. There were a lot of us. The news services without exception (that I saw) described this as

A march by the far-right Scottish Defence League (SDL) was opposed by a group called United Against Fascism (UAF).

Both marches approached St Andrew’s House by different routes.

Hundreds of officers were placed between the two groups. The SDL marchers were driven away by bus.

Scottish and undecided

Tomorrow, I’m going to an anti-fascist demo. But more of that later.

This morning, in response to the news about David Cameron’s decision to award the BSkyB decision-maker role to Jeremy Hunt (and Hunt then actively misleading Parliament) Ben Bradshaw, Labour MP for Exeter, tweeted:

When was last time a Minister repeatedly misled Parliament didn’t resign & wasn’t sacked? Cameron/Hunt dragging us to a new low #leveson

— Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) May 25, 2012

I’m in agreement with Ben Bradshaw that this is a low point, but the last Minister who repeatedly misled the House of Commons and neither resigned nor was sacked was Tony Blair: he fed the Labour MPs the “dodgy dossier” that somewhat quelled the backbencher rebellion against the Iraq war. As multiple people (myself included) promptly pointed out to him.