Pathetic Unionist try to link SNP with fascism.

There has been natural outrage in Scotland over the publication over an article in Scotland on Sunday on claims that Scottish Nationalism has a dark past

Accompanied with a photo shop of a photo shop of an iconic Scotsman Photo (copyrighted but you can see here




The article by Gavin Bowd  claims to reveals some uncomfortable truths in Fascist Scotland but in fact comes up only a few examples of linking fascism with Pre War Scottish Nationalism and  indeed most of the article despite the SoS attempts to create the link by the photoshop points the main support seems to come from the Tory hierarchy who had used the Scottish flag to link it to the British Empire .

For instance Bowd writes

It was not only the gilded youth of St Andrews that was attracted by Fascism. Fear and hatred of the “Judeo-Bolshevik” threat were rife in the Scottish elite, from landed gentry to business tycoons and military officers. In the 1920s, the Earl of Glasgow, inspired by Mussolini’s march on Rome, was prominent in the creation of the British Fascisti. The Earl of Erroll proudly sported a Fascist insignia on his sporran. The Duke of Buccleuch was an outspoken supporter of appeasement, while, as late as 1939, the Duke of Hamilton argued in The Times for Nazi Germany’s right to Lebensraum. It was therefore not as a victim of “tragic hallucinations” (according to Josef Goebbels) that on 10 May, 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess made an ill-fated flight to Eaglesham to discuss peace terms with the duke.

Gavin Bowd

 Scotland on Sunday 7 April 2013 

He concludes:

 Today, the ruling party of Scotland has nationalism as its creed and is suspiciously coy about its own history. Elsewhere in the nationalist family, the BNP, before it plunged into fratricidal warfare, trounced the Far Left in recent Scottish elections and, in 2010, received a respectable 1,000 votes in Alex Salmond’s stamping ground of Banff and Buchan. To this should be added growing sympathy for the agenda of Ukip. The Scottish electorate now appears more receptive to radical nationalism than Mosley’s blackshirts could ever dream of. With fears of globalisation and mass immigration on the rise, and the political “old gang” unpopular, there might still be living space in Scotland for the “Brown Beast”. In this way, we would be very much in line with our European cousins. Wha’s like us? Quite a few.

 Gavin Bowd

 Scotland on Sunday 7 April 2013 

So it is clear that this article intention is to Link the Ideology of a progressive Left of Centre party the SNP with a racist right wing British parties .

I've no doubt any competent  historian can dig up Scottish Nationalist before 1939 who might have spoken well of Mussolini or Hitler and expressed Antisemitism  but this is just a appalling attempt by the Unionist media to smear the Independence  campaign.

In Wales we are used to the accusations laid against pro war Plaid Leaders like Saunders Lewis  and Ambrose Bebb to link Plaid with a fascist past but it doesn't hold water here and it doesn't hold war in Scotland.