The 'Watch' Groups and 'Anti-Englishness' in Late Twentieth Century Scotland
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Over the past year in Scotland, anti-English vandalism, warning shots, and other forms of intimidation have become increasingly frequent. On 3 December 1997, the British government moved to stop this tide of violence by announcing a new Crime and Disorder Bill which would make anti-English activity illegal in Scotland. While there had been a certain amount of anti-English feeling dating as far back as the thirteenth century, it had always been directed at the ruling elite as opposed to the English people generally. It was in the fall of 1993 that anti-English "ethnic-nationalism" materialized in Scotland for the first time with the appearance of a small radical nationalist group called Scottish Watch following the 1992 general election. While the appearance of this and another quasi-organization known as "Settler Watch" produced a media storm and caused many Scottish intellectuals to ask for a clearer collective understanding of "Scottishness" to my knowledge nobody has attempted to place the "Watch Groups" in a broader understanding of Scottish nationalism. There has been no attempt to explain the development of these groups.
I will argue that the Watch Groups are the product of the evolution of modern Scottish nationalism and the influx of an increasing number of English "white settlers" into Scottish villages.
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.... As we all know ridicule is the strongest form of oppression and this is how the Scots are cowed by the English. They believe theirs is the only proper language... The English here in Scotland are like a form of mafia and if we don't like it we have to shut up......
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http://www.nationalismproject.org/articles/zuelow1.htm
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil
- Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922)
The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth.
For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish.
- Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596).
The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation.
- Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature
Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation.
- Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
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Saturday, June 17th, 2006
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