Redcoats and Red Faces
Redcoats and Red Faces
There are too many real problems to be angry about yet nationalists keep inviting us to rage against imaginary things.
Today Edinburgh Castle joined haggis, shortbread, teacakes, water, and whisky on the list of anti-Scottish enemies.
You see, the cafe in the castle has been refurbished and is still called what it has always been called: The Redcoat Cafe. This is what passes for a crisis in the SNP’s Scotland.
SNP politicians were outraged. You might think in a country where 250,000 kids are in poverty, a quarter of pupils can’t read to standard and 860,000 are on NHS waiting lists that they might have other things to do. You’d be wrong. Those torches won’t light themselves, those pitchforks are useless without a mob to brandish them.
Pity the social media manager for the castle this evening. Used to occasional alerts from Japanese tourists asking if, like all Edinburgh cafes, Harry Potter was written there, right now their phone is vibrating with rage.
The hundreds of replies to the castle’s invitation to enjoy a cream tea with them are worth scrolling through. It’s an orgy of idiotic anger.
The stupidity isn’t about a lack of education. In one response, reminiscent of Pizzagate, an academically accomplished Scottish Green Party member posts how the cafe deserves to be firebombed. He should perhaps be more worried about the boys in blue than the squaddies in red.
It doesn’t matter to those egging on this mob that Scottish soldiers have worn red tunics for centuries. The need to feel this anger is more powerful than any historical analysis.
Nationalism all over the world stokes outrage at the desecration of national symbols by an outsider group. The problem in Scotland is that nobody in any position of power is denying Scottish cultural identity. The modern UK state, for all its many faults, does not impose a uniform identity. It’s a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual marvel.
Nationalists pace around on the cultural battlefield (dressed in ahistorical costume, presumably) but there’s nobody on the other side. That is why they have to spend so much time creating imaginary enemies.
Sometimes it is described as faux anger. I think this misses the point. They really are very angry - even if they have no real idea why. They are so fired up because this is where they live, where their politics comes alive. Remember Jim Sillar’s famous line criticising Scots for being “ninety-minute patriots”. They expect every one of us to live every moment in the heightened tribalism of the terraces.
Most people are too filled with anxiety over how to stretch their wages to the end of the month to have much room for anger at imaginary things. A political movement that spends its time going beetroot-red at the thought of which flag is on a bag of carrots looks increasingly detached from reality.
Normally the smart advice is not to amplify your opponent’s framing of politics. This time I say share and share again - and ask whether voters might prefer politicians who see the real problems in Scotland.