Farage gets Bum's Rush from Edinburgh: "They even hate the union jack."

Nigel Farage, the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader, found himself in retreat on Thursday evening as dozens of protesters hounded him out of central Edinburgh.

Farage was finally whisked away in a police riot van under a tirade of abuse from a crowd of about 50 young demonstrators – students, anti-racist campaigners and activists in the 'Radical Independence' movement – after being forced to retreat not once, twice or three times, but four times. Farage was first forced out of the Canon's Gait pub on the Royal Mile after the landlord took fright as the demonstrators disrupted his casual press conference with shouts of "racist", "scum" and "homophobe".

Out on the street, as the fingers pointed and taunts escalated, he was rejected by one taxi and turfed out of a second. Then, finally, the harassed and ill-prepared handful of officers were forced to push him back into the Canon's Gait, slamming its front doors shut, as the demonstrators chanted: "Nigel, you're a bawbag, Nigel you're a bawbag, na, na, na, hey!" with gusto.

The etched sign above the Canon Gait's door read: "Enjoy your visit."

With further verses of "Ukip scum, off our streets" echoing in his ears, Farage was bustled into a police van under the glare of television camera lights. After gamely attempting to argue back, trying to hit back at the repeated accusations of racism and homophobia with protests of innocence, Farage finally had to admit his surprise.

"We've never, ever, ever had this kind of response. Is this a kind of anti-English thing? It could be," he said to a reporter. It wasn't. Not entirely. The protesters disagreed. Many said they were there to protest at Ukip's stance on immigration and the political backgrounds of Ukip's motley collection of local council candidates; others were there to protest against his party's obscure economic policies.

There was no violence, no punches thrown, no missiles lobbed. Rachel, a young woman in a wheelchair who had wheeled herself on to the Royal Mile to blockade the second taxi Farage tried to take, said simply: "Ukip are just bullshit."

Some were independence campaigners there to remind him of his nationality: after one, standing just a few feet from Farage, invited the Ukip leader to "shove your union jack up your arse", a flustered Farage said: "Clearly this is anti-British, anti-English. They even hate the union jack."

Farage had arrived at the Canon's Gait in buoyant mood, planning for his long-denied breakthrough into Scottish politics. Compared to the near-25% support in the English local elections, the highest his party has ever polled in Scotland is 5.2% in the 2009 European elections; in many others, Ukip support rests at under 1%.

The latest Ipsos Mori opinion poll, published in early May, found that just two Scots out of 1,001 would vote Ukip. He was hoping for a quiet, convivial briefing – hopefully with pint in hand – with the Scottish political press corps. This was to be the official launch of Ukip's campaign for the Holyrood parliamentary seat of Aberdeen Donside – a seat held very comfortably by the Scottish National party. "We've proved we can get votes in Wales, England and Northern Ireland, We're still untested in Scotland," he said.

"We've not had an opportunity to test Ukip policies with the Scottish people for a very long time." Asked about Ukip's chances, he was optimistic. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if we did quite creditably."

Less than 30 minutes after speaking those words, the MEP for South-East Counties was sitting hunched on the rear seat of a police riot van being driven off at speed, his plans to introduce Otto Inglis, Ukip's ever hopeful candidate for the Scottish parliament byelection on 20 June, forgotten.

Farage calls Scottish activist protesters ‘fascist scum’

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has described protesters who besieged him in an Edinburgh pub as "fascist scum".

Mr Farage had to be escorted from the Canons' Gait pub in a police van after angry confrontations on Thursday.

He told BBC Scotland the incident was deeply racist and displayed a total hatred of the English.

Mr Farage called on Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond to condemn the behaviour. The SNP said the UKIP leader had "lost the plot".

Mr Farage hung up during a telephone interview with the Good Morning Scotland programme on BBC Radio Scotland after being pressed about his lack of knowledge of Scottish politics and the low level of support for his party north of the border.

He later described the interview as "insulting".

Listen to it here and decide for yourself:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22566180

First Minister Alex Salmond said that Mr Farage's accusation of a "hate campaign" from the BBC during the radio interview showed it would be a "great mistake" to take "somebody of that mentality with any degree of seriousness".

Mr Salmond added: "We can frankly do without UKIP, who dislike everybody and know absolutely nothing about Scotland."

When asked if he condemned the demonstration against Mr Farage, the first minister said: "If there's been any law-breaking - and that's yet to be established - then obviously we condemn that, as we always do in Scotland, but you've got to get things into context.

"A student demonstration isn't the Dreyfus trial."

He should accept reality and declare himself an 'English nationalist' which is precisely what he is. @engyesscotland@nigel_farage
— Joe Middleton (@freescotlandnow) May 18, 2013

Nigel Farage's Scottish hounding was an antidote to fawning media treatment | Mike Small gu.com/p/3gva8/tw via @guardian
— Morna Simpson (@girlgeeks) May 18, 2013

UKIP have always been out of touch and patronising towards Scotland as I found when I spoke with a UKIP Euro MP on the radio after the SNP's first election victory in the Scottish parliament (see post below this) - JM.

Britain not Scotland has a fascism problem



In light of the disgraceful image in todays Scotland on Sunday (below) which attempts to link the Scots self determination movement with both the Nazis and the Klu Klux Klan and the scaremongering associated article it is worth considering whether the British themselves have something significant to hide in terms of links to fascism both before and after the second World War.

 

I should start off by saying that the Scots, English and Welsh all played an honourable part in defending the World from the fascist threat of the Nazis. During that time however Churchill regularly referred to Britain as 'England' and during the war Scots were buried under an avalanch of propaganda that rarely if ever mentioned Scotland.

 

Perhaps it is because of this (possibly unintended) insult that the post war years saw a gradual but ultimately impressive increase in support for the Scottish independence movement.

 

London's actual attitude towards Scotland at the time however is rather more disturbing. According to official documents Britain would actually have allowed an invasion of Scotland to happen and that England was seen as "the total priority for defence".

 

These damning allegations are contained in a book called When Hitler Comes which is available from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/If-Hitler-Comes-Preparing-Invasion/dp/1843410621

The book also exposes fascist Scots in Scottish society however as the above article notes these were linked within the British Unionists (which was the old name of the Scottish Conservatives) and landed aristocrats.*

Hitler's ultimate agenda was not entirely understood before the war. Though there were obvious indications of his hatred of the Jews the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust was only exposed fully afterwards.

In England in particular there was substantial support for fascism and in fact Oswald Mosely who was a politician who had been a Westminster MP for both Labour and Tory formed his own army of Brownshirts under the label of the British Union of Fascists.

The BUF (flag above) used to martial support in the thousands and held various parades. After the war started their support died away however an English minority attraction to fascism has continued until today with some modern support for Nick Griffin's British National Party who have even managed to gain enough support in England to get MEP's elected to the European Parliament!

The BNP and the non-fascistic but still xenophobic and offensive and anti-Scottish UKIP (UK Independence party) an oxymoron as the UK are already independent have made zero headway in Scotland. In England however UKIP are rising fast and the British Conservatives (who with one MP are also as popular as the plague in Scotland) have taken them so seriously that an in-out referendum on the EU is officially planned in the next few years.   

In short then England had a real pre-war problem with home grown outright fascism and has an on ongoing problem with a modern equivalent of the French National Front in the BNP.

Given the above facts the attempts by the Scotland on Sunday today via a book named 'Fascist Scotland' which is illustrated on the web by a picture of Oswald Mosely but had a disgusting mock up of a Saltire shaped into a Nazi flag in the paper (see top of article) to suggest there was real support in pre WW2 Scotland for fascism based on much innuendo and speculation are desperate and rather absurd and I suspect this has been a desperate attempt to bury the bad news of the original damning book and its conclusion that Scotland was seen as expendable by British military planners during World War II.

Clearly the writer desperately wants Scotland and early Scots nationalists to be tarred with the Nazi brush but he admits himself that BUF demos which were organised up here were disrupted and fought against in Scotland just like the English Defence League (which they renamed as Scottish Defence League in Scotland but no-one believes it) demos in Scotland involving a few hundred English skinheads have been in recent times.  

The Orange Lodge can muster 10K anti-independence Union Jack waving marchers down the Royal Mile (much of them imported from NI) but no-one could argue that they credibly dominate the political debate in Scotland. In fact their sectarian views are rightly seen as repugnant by the vast majority of Scottish society.

The summation of the article shows the writers intentions and marks a new low even for the Scotsman:

Today, the ruling party of Scotland has nationalism as its creed and is suspiciously coy about its own history. Elsewhere in the nationalist family, the BNP, before it plunged into fratricidal warfare, trounced the Far Left in recent Scottish elections and, in 2010, received a respectable 1,000 votes in Alex Salmond’s stamping ground of Banff and Buchan. To this should be added growing sympathy for the agenda of Ukip. The Scottish electorate now appears more receptive to radical nationalism than Mosley’s blackshirts could ever dream of. With fears of globalisation and mass immigration on the rise, and the political “old gang” unpopular, there might still be living space in Scotland for the “Brown Beast”. In this way, we would be very much in line with our European cousins. Wha’s like us? Quite a few.

The facts are that the SNP are a civic nationalist grouping which warmly welcomes support from all sections and ethnic groupings in Scottish society. Even in it's earliest incarnations it supported self determination and opposed right wing extremism. Read the Flag in the Wind by John MacCormick to read the early (and proud) history of the SNP.

Even early outspoken radical Scots like Wendy Wood (who was often involved in civil disobedience such as moving the border post to it's more accurate position just after the River Tweed) were firmly rooted in legitimate campaigning and democratic politics.

Despite the British State's best efforts the Scottish independence movement has never ever been linked credibly to any political violence of any kind. This is despite the fact that the UK authorities (as exposed by Gaelic doc Diomhair still available on Youtube) attempted to supply young Scots students with fake explosives. MI5 have also regularly spied on Scottish demonstrations and the British Government itself deliberately and persistently lied about the extent of North Sea Oil during the original 1978 devolution referendum.

British mainstream parties like Labour and the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are also nationalists but of the British type. It could be credibly argued that British nationalism which constantly harks back to the glory days of the British Empire and seems to embody a distrust of foreigners and immigration is of a much more negative nature than the 'national freedom' type nationalism of the SNP which has much more in common with those countries who eventually escaped the imperial yoke.  

To insult the SNP and the wider Yes campaign in such a desperate and sickening fashion shows the desperation of the No lobby which has came up with zero positive arguments for union. A fact effectively illustrated in this video which was temporarily banned from youtube for daring to use embarassing pseudo-patriotic footage of Better Together's own activists.  



* Incidentally the former English King (Edward VIII) was in fact known to be a Nazi Supporter who had meetings with Hitler and who would almost certainly have been installed as a puppet ruler of Britain if Germany had succeeded in their invasion plans.