The Union as Racketeering

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We’re witnessing now the No campaign and the Unionist infrastructure (what old Marxists would call ‘hegemony’) descend into a base language centred around threats and intimidation. I used to think that devout British subjects in Scotland were suffering an advanced form of mass Stockholm Syndrome, a nation of Patty Hearst’s.

I began to fantasize that the uncrumbling of this malignant form would come not by the consciousness of Scots but by development of it’s inverse – Lima Syndrome – amongst our ‘leaders’: Johann Lamont, Malcolm Rifkind, Michael Forsyth and others. The return of the Stone of Destiny was the first sign of this new variant strain, which remained undetected for years, until Michael Moore cracked and – in a remarkable press conference chaired by Alan Cochrane at Dunfermline Abbey – came over to the cause of independence, only to be followed quickly by Messrs McLeish, Chisolm, Boyack and Dugdale in a dramatic Burns Night revelry gone too far. But the real surprise came when Duncan Hothersall, Jackie Baillie, Ian Smart and Brian Wilson announced they had all joined Labour for Indy dressed in trews and playing air guitar to the Rollers Shang-a-Lang!  at the Edinburgh Festival.

I digress.

Scots aren’t suffering from Stockholm Syndrome – the mass delusion isn’t that strong. But we have been ruled by racketeers and the problem for the No campaign is that the more shrill and aggressive the threats become – as they have this week over BAE – the more this is exposed as a particularly vicious form of constitutional intimidation.

A crime racket is defined as a ‘a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist.’

Britain is a concept that offers a certain form of protection. It’s a protection racket that protects you from the future, from innovation or facing difficult challenges (like ‘what are we going to do now the worlds changed?’) by wrapping you (tightly) in bunting, celebrating the past and glorying in our institutions and achievements, however inadequate, corrupt or or blood-soaked they might actually turn out to be be under the most cursory scrutiny.

The dependency culture of an entire sector – shipbuilding – on handouts from the MoD – and the threats of its withdrawal today and yesterday in both ‘Houses’ – is a prime example of this racket. The secrecy around this set-up is falling each day as the whispers turn to shouts and the reality dawns on a whole set of people that this is both a deeply uncomfortable set of relationships and an utterly unsustainable situation. The Unionist Omertà is failing.

This is why the process of gaining independence is becoming both crucial and moving. Yes we could vote No and guarantee jobs on the Clyde for eternity. But the more you think about that prospect the more your realise what a backwards, fragile, and quietly insane idea that is. That such a project should be protected under a thinly veiled series of threats simply adds a tone of bitterness to the arrangement but the idea itself is one that’s open to plain ridicule. How long shall we build these ships and for what purpose? If, as seems likely, they have no operational purpose, nor can we afford to arm them, might we consider keeping both Portsmouth and Govan open? One to build them and one to dismantle them? The parts could then be trucked north for the process to restart? Like prisoners stitching then unpicking mailbags the entire British workforce could be kept in gainful employment in perpetuity.

Once we see the Lib-Tory-Labour alliance as part of racketeering operation the whole thing makes much more sense. They’re more Triad than Yardies, and the goal, to protect their power base, is both rational and comprehensible. They need to be either ‘arrested’ or persuaded to ‘go legit’.
If we keep paying the extortion will continue. This week told us that. It’s becoming clearer.

Comments (8)

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  1. Dave Coull says:

    A shipbuilding industry which is dependent on the building of warships is, by definition, a shipbuilding industry which is dependent on the continuation, indefinitely into the future, of wars and warmongering. That is neither a moral, nor a healthy, nor a sustainable basis for industry. Some seafaring equivalent of swords into ploughshares should be sought.

  2. Will the ambition of empire never end? will the yearning for small boys up chimneys just keep on being another ambition? how far back does this mindset of Westminster go? back to being serfs and begging for a days work perhaps?

    1. Dave Coull says:

      Speaking of sending small boys up chimneys, this was done for two reasons (1) they were cheap, so it was a cheap way of sweeping chimneys, and (2) because they were small they could get into spaces that larger folk couldn’t. Unfortunately, chimneys had awkward angles in them, and there were incidents of small boys getting trapped up chimneys and just staying there until they died. The Building Regulations regarding chimney construction were amended to make this less likely. Nevertheless, even after the building regulations were amended to make it less likely, it still happened. The last case was about 90 years, in the 1920s, at Windsor Castle. A small chimney sweep boy got stuck up a chimney at Windsor Castle and died there. Because royal palaces are exempt from the Building Regulations, you see.

  3. Abulhaq says:

    There are many ways of looking at our relationship to the British State; the noble lie of Plato, the king’s new clothes of Andersen, rabbit caught in headlights, cargo-cult or, as referred to, a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever the name we Scots did fall for it. Why, can be left to post-independence historians and psychologists. Too many of us now know the truth about this scam for even a scaredy-cat, comfort blanket no vote next September to signal a return to “normal”.

  4. Patrick Scott Hogg says:

    Scotland will need its own navy and the ability to protect both the fishermen of the SCOTTISH SEA and the rigs in the SCOTTISH NORTH SEA, so shipbuilding will be required on the Clyde. Do not add to the uncertainty of the people who work at Govan or Scotstoun………………..who is going to turn their writing skills towards the 6000 miles of stolen sea from Berwick to Carnoustie? Scottish water for sure but given technically to England in 1999……IT IS NOT ON!!!!! And why is there no SCOTTISH SEA by name? There is an Irish sea, an English Channel and a NORTH SEA……but no SEA that is named as our sea. It is time we claimed and re-take what is ours! And rename it ours while we are at it.

    1. Abulhaq says:

      With respect to geographical names the North Sea was formerly known as the German Ocean and the French call the “English” channel La Manche. Straits of Dover are called Pas de Calais. Macedonia or the Former Yougoslav Republic of Macedonia as the Greeks insist. What’s in a name? Quite a lot apparently. Arabian Gulf or Persian Gulf, states are free to call neighbouring stretches of water whatever they choose. Ownership is a different matter. Wars have started for less.

  5. James Morton says:

    if they are to be believed they deliberately sacrificed around 3k jobs in england to “prop” up jobs in scotland, while making a none too subtle threat as to what happens next if we vote yes.
    In a stroke they set one nation in the union against the other, while threatening the latter that jobs will go back to former if we don’t play ball. For many people in England, there is now no incentive for them to want Scotland to stay. They need Scotland to leave to get the jobs back.
    For most Scots what they have seen is a direct threat to their livelihoods – some 900 have already lost their jobs with the rest being held hostage.

    For the No campaign – they have crossed a line if they did but know it. They have never been able to articulate a positive case for the Union unless it was via “Dependency as a boon of union”. Their scare stories were just absurd nonsense. But they’ve decided to hold a gun to Scotland’s head instead.

    Even if they win[god forbid], the union loses. They have single handedly created more division in England against the Union than Salmond could ever have dreamt of. The nabobs of UKOK won’t see it that way. They are positively aglow with happiness thinking that Scots will meekly bend the knee. They have forgotten how Scotland treated the last westminster party who thought it had achieved that back in the 70’s.

  6. roddy says:

    Seems to me that those pesky old Marxists hit the nail pretty much on the head with their “hegemony” explanation!

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