SCOTTISH CATHOLICS – A BULWARK OF THE UNION?

Tom Griffin is a London based Irish journalist. He raises an interesting point about the failure of the the nationalist movement to get more from the republicanism in the West Coast of Scotland: “One question which has always fascinated me is why the SNP has never been able to capitalise on support for Irish nationalism among Scottish Catholics?”

He is of course quite right, it's incredible the amount of fourth and fifth generation Scots of Irish descent who would scream for self-determination, bridle at every act of the British State, who know their Irish history inside out but couldn't give a hoot about Scotland. Perhaps it's more complicated though. Scottish regiments have been cynically used in Northern Ireland for the last thirty years.

Griffin rightly argues that one reason is the SNP's unwillingness to draw a parallel which might be used to associate it with political violence, another is the SNP’s former association as Tartan Tories, and their inability to embrace republicanism.

Could the Scottish Socialist Party have more luck tapping into this obvious political energy? They probably already have. But the idea of ‘Scotland’ needs to be turned from one which is at source Calvinist, dogged, dour and mean spirited into something more modern and celebratory.

Finally Tom misses the obvious point that the catholic vote has turned to Labour is the tightly meshed Labour membership at a local level throughout the West of Scotland, how that can be broken despite mounting contradictions is one of the last mysteries of time.

Tom Grifffin's article is here.