JK Rowling should look through history and realise Scotland is a Land of Saints

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is again moaning about alleged anti-English sentiment within the SNP. This was in response to Herald columnist Iain Macwhirter stating:

"Any trace of ethnic nationalism, and anti-English sentiment, was expunged from the party in the 1970s. Nicola Sturgeon was the only party leader in Britain who, during the General Election debates, consistently and energetically argued that immigrants benefit society."

This was too much for JK, who tweeted in disbelief:

Quite a claim. How many English incomers were polled before the making of that confident assertion? 

But has she ever asked any Scottish incomers to England what their experience has been like, or what TV experience the Scots had when even our own news was read with an upper crust English accent? Let me share a bit of my own experience.

During the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, I calculated that I had spent almost half my adult life in England. This is because I did a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Keele University near Stoke-on-Trent, then worked in Birmingham for Wrox Press as an editor on their programming textbooks, then worked in London as a software developer.

Certainly, during that time I got ribbed and mocked for being Scottish but it was done in friendly jest not with serious anti-Scottish hatred. England has always mocked the Scottish stereotype of a red-haired, kilt-wearing drunk. For example, look at the famous Monty Python sci-fi sketch, were aliens from the Andromeda galaxy turn the stereotypical bowler-hat wearing Englishman into a Scotsman.

Should we now demand that the surviving cast members apologise for this sketch? Should John Cleese be invited to Downing St to address the nation about his racist attitudes to the Scots? And what about English comedian Russ Abbot and his CU Jimmy character?

During the 1980s, he got great laughs from ridiculing the Scots. Should he now be dragged into Downing St to address the nation after John Cleese and also apologise for his racism towards Scotland?

Scotland and England have always been rivals. Perhaps that's the universal law of neighbours: they'll always compete to see who's best. Given that England dominated the BBC, there was a lot of laughter at the expense of the Scots.

In movies, it became the fashion to have a drunk, hard-man Scot in what has been called miserablism: a poor Scottish male, trapped by his situation, turns to drink and drugs because there is no escape. Just watch the movie Trainspotting. Should the movie industry now apologise to Scotland for their stark portrayal of the Scots?

Against that backdrop, we have JK Rowling moaning that there might be some anti-English rhetoric in Scotland. Well, knock me down with a feather. What a surprise if there is a bit of banter aimed back at those who've been taking the p*ss out of us for years.

Does Scotland hate the English? No. Indeed, I love England and have many good friends down there and many happy memories of my time in England. No, we Scots don't hate the English. Are we a bit p*ssed off that English culture is packaged up and sold as British culture? You bet. Are we annoyed at the dominance of English TV and English accents and English views being broadcast into Scotland, with the result that we feel Scotland's voice isn't heard? Yes, of course we are.

But we know where the rot lies. It's not in England, it's in London and Westminster where the decisions are made. More decentralisation of broadcasting will allow local voices to be better heard, rather than London broadcasting its news to the whole of the UK and pretending that it is British news. The north of England hates the London dominance just as much as Wales and Scotland does.

So JK Rowling should take a look at the history of how Scotland and the Scots have been depicted on 'British' TV, at how Scotland is portrayed in movies, how Scotland has been depicted in the media as a result of indyref and the on-going anti-Scottish sentiments currently evident in politics today, with, for example, Westminster voting against making the Scottish parliament permanent - even though it was a key feature of the "vow."

Once Westminster and London stop demeaning Scotland, then she might have a leg to stand on. But at the moment, she's massively got the wrong end of the stick. I don't hate JK but I do pity her. As I am fond of saying, "it's easy to believe one side of the story when you only ever hear one side of the story." If she researches the other side of the coin, she might find it quite illuminating.

So I hereby encourage JK Rowling to make her next book a non-fiction one. She is a great author and could easily do it. Let her catalogue how Scotland has been portrayed in British life since the invention of the television. Let her show just how much of Scotland's voice has been heard and how much it has been London-based ridicule. Perhaps then she'll see that for Scotland to be as welcoming as it is to the English, Scotland should really be classed as a Land of Saints.