David's Daily Diversions

First of all, I want

First of all, I want to extend thanks to veteran blogger Natalie Solent for linking to and commenting upon yesterday’s Daily Diversion. She also posted it Samizdata. Even if she hadn’t, I would recommend both blogs to you.

Keeping on our theme of what is and isn’t inciting racial hatred, if you are in the UK, you may have seen the rather shocking story of Sir Iain Noble. Sir Iain owns a merchant bank and an estate on the very beautiful Isle of Skye.

In a speech to the Scottish Countryside Alliance, Sir Iain called himself a “racialist”. To clarify this, he said “It doesn’t mean that I don’t like foreigners. I love them, all colours. I have many Indian friends and even one or two black ones. But I don’t want them to settle and create ghettoes in my patch.” This is apparently because he believes there is some sort of genetic purity to be preserved by Scots.

He tried to analogise efforts by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the Government’s environment body, to ensure that trees were grown from local seeds. Digging himself further in a hole, he said, “I don’t have any English blood in my veins, a thing of which I am inordinately proud. I’m sure SNH would be pleased as well because they believe in purity of species.” But, by golly, I bet even has even one or two English friends. He hasn’t made any in the SNH office, of course.

But let’s pause for a moment on this whole idea of racial purity. First of all, the whole concept of race is fuzzy at best. But how did the Scots become a race? This is a term that has lost any meaning whatsoever, so it is trotted out to mean anything whatsoever. This even true of the Race Relations Act, as mentioned yesterday.

In declining to withdraw his comments, Sir Iain tried to explain, “I am not a racist in the sense of disliking people. I just don’t believe that ancient civilisations should be destroyed by aliens.” So the Scots are a race in the sense that they are an “ancient civilisation”? What does he mean by ancient? Surely he doesn’t refer to that epoch that historians generally term “ancient”, generally accepted in the West as anything before the fall of the Roman Empire. Who does he think was in Scotland then?

In fact, it was around this time that the first of some Irish immigrants began disrupting the local Britons (ancestors of the Welsh) and Picts. Those foreigners were called the Scots. They created their first ghettos in the Kintyre peninsula. They kept their own language and generally made a nuisance of themselves. But wouldn’t you know it: they started mixing the other groups and lost their “purity”. Eventually one of their tribal leaders, Kenneth MacAlpin managed to get himself made ruler over the Scots and Picts and northern Britons, and everyone got amalgamated into the term Scot. This was true of the Scandinavians who invaded a couple of centuries later. And I hope that Sir Iain isn’t descended from any of the great Scottish noble families of the Middle Ages. They were all Anglo-Norman interlopers, after all.

Methinks Sir Iain’s pure Scotland really means Scotland before predominantly 20th century immigration to the UK from Africa and Asia. Scotland before some of the people looked different enough from him that he could tell. But this is just another chapter in the long and continuous history of immigration into Scotland.

So where does his pure Scottish blood come from? Well, our friends at the Telegraph have at least part of the answer:

“Sir Iain may not have any English blood. But it turns out that his maternal grandfather was Johan Michelet of the Norwegian Diplomatic Service, while his grandmother, Amie Grogan, hailed from County Dublin.

“Sir Iain himself was born in Germany and educated in England, Argentina and China. His family's fortune was made in England, at the Vickers-Armstrong armaments factory. If he obeys his own rules on local seed, Sir Iain will be on the next ferry to leave Skye.”

By the way, since Tower Hamlets Council is careful to accommodate all ethnic groups and their celebrations, I hope they didn’t forget to serve haggis on Burns Day.