The Butcher's apron

by Campbell Martin MSP

from the Freescot Review

Why did the Party of Scottish independence apologise to British unionists?

So, the SNP has apologised after one of its MSPs used the phrase “Butcher’s apron” to describe the British Union flag in a press release. British unionist political opponents were said to be outraged at the use of this phrase, with the Tories describing themselves as “appalled” at this “separatist nonsense”. Well, no surprise there, then. No surprise at all – so just why did the SNP apologise?

Apparently, so the unionist line goes, to describe the British flag in such terms is to insult the thousands of Scots who have served and are serving under the flag in HM Armed Forces, and those Scots – presumably unionist Scots - who still look fondly on the union flag and, indeed, the British Union itself. Had the unionist critics of the phrase not changed it to read “a butcher’s apron” – with the imagery of a blood-soaked rag (although that might actually be not too far from the truth) - rather than ‘the Butcher’s apron’ – as reference to the flag carried into battle by ‘Butcher’ Cumberland at Culloden in 1746 - they might not have been on quite such shaky ground; and had they even attempted to understand the origins of the phrase, rather than rushing out press releases of their own in order that they could be outraged and appalled, then their petty party politics would not have reflected quite so badly on them and would not have exposed those London-based British unionist parties as seriously ignorant of Scottish history and, in a more contemporary sense, deeply, deeply anti-Scottish.

Notwithstanding the fact that virtually every ‘Scottish’ regiment of the British Army has in its historical past some shameful ‘battle honour’ from its role, in the name of British imperialism and Empire, in subjugating and exploiting the people of developing countries around the globe, a close look at supporters of an independent Scotland will find many ex-service personnel, plenty of whom were driven to their belief in a free Scotland by their experiences in the British Army. So not all Scots who have served or who are still serving in the British armed forces will be at all upset by the historically accurate description of the British Union flag as the Butcher’s apron.

Indeed, isn’t it a strange wee anomaly that recruitment advertisements for ‘Scottish’ regiments of the British Army have, in recent years, relied heavily on images of the Scottish saltire and the slogan ‘Scottish soldier’ to attract young Scots to join up when, at the same time, the British establishment refuse to allow any flag other than the British Union flag to fly above Edinburgh castle and, therefore, above Scotland’s capital city? And isn’t that anomaly compounded when we see images of Scottish soldiers in Iraq, putting their lives at risk in the interests of American oil corporations, while flying Scotland’s flag from their vehicles - particularly when we consider that Scotland’s wee devolved parliament was denied any say in the deployment of ‘Scottish soldiers’ and when the people of Scotland overwhelmingly opposed the illegal war and subsequent occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq.

So, it would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British unionist opponents hadn’t deliberately misrepresented the press release. It would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British unionist opponents hadn’t manufactured outrage in order that they could be appalled – particularly in the week when tame Jock Gordon Brown urged us all to wrap ourselves in the red, white and blue and feel the warmth of the cuddly British State. It would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British unionist opponents hadn’t strongly disagreed with any assertion of the benefits to Scotland of retaking our independence, however that argument was phrased. So why did the SNP feel the need to apologise to its opponents, the same British unionists who loathe the very idea of an independent Scotland, the independent Scotland that the SNP is supposed to have as its inviolable core value?

The reason the SNP apologised to the unionists who threw a tantrum and ran squealing to their buddies in the unionist press, is because the SNP now wants to portray itself as a part of the very establishment it used to fight against.

Today’s Scottish National Party is a party of the centre-right, a party that would, in an independent Scotland, establish a wee Scottish version of the pro-free market, pro-big business, pro-NATO, pro-private sector, low taxation, low wage British model that has created so many of the problems from which Scottish citizens continue to suffer. Except, of course, that, in an SNP-led independent Scotland, HM the Queen would still be the Head of State, meaning that the people of Scotland still would not be citizens. They would remain subjects of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II – even though we never had an Elizabeth I.

The SNP apologised for upsetting the unionist enemies of Scotland because it is still pursuing an agenda in which it seeks to be allowed to manage devolution within the United Kingdom rather than delivering for Scotland the desperately needed normal status of an independent nation. The SNP apologised to its unionist opponents because the party’s electoral strategy is to ask the supporters of those unionist parties to lend support to the SNP and allow it to form the devolved administration at Holyrood.

Rather than persuade the people of Scotland of the benefits and merits of independence and, on that basis, secure a mandate and deliver all of the powers that come only with independence, the SNP wants unionist voters to vote SNP and the sweetener for them to do this is that the party would then hold a referendum, at which the unionist voters could vote down independence.

Independence can wait – or as one senior SNP Shadow Cabinet member put it, the independence thing can be parked - just so long as the current hierarchy of the party get themselves re-elected and get their backsides onto the backseats of Ministerial Mondeos. It doesn’t matter to them that they would be Ministers in a devolved administration answerable to the British Government in London; they have become deluded into believing that they, as the SNP, can manage devolution within the United Kingdom better than their unionist opponents.

That is why the SNP apologised to its British unionist opponents and any unionist voter who has so little to bother them that they would be outraged and appalled if an SNP MSP referred to a piece of cloth as the Butcher’s apron.

SNP activists know the enemies of Scotland are the unionist political parties that have kept our nation on its knees for three hundred years. The SNP apology to its unionist opponents for making what they considered to be a disparaging reference to the flag of the State that has robbed our nation of its wealth and has forced so many of our people to live their lives below the poverty line was, for a great many SNP activists, the final sell-out of the party that formerly had a vision of a better life for all of the people of Scotland.

The SNP apology to its unionist opponents was given because the party wanted to convince anti-independence, British unionist voters that the SNP was no longer the radical party that wanted to smash British State control over Scotland. Instead, the SNP wants unionist voters to know that the British union would be safe in its hands. By apologising to its unionist opponents, the SNP sold-out the activists who have fought long and hard to drag the party from the political fringes to a position where it had been tantalisingly close to delivering the goal of independence.

Those activists were never scared to refer to the British flag as the Butcher’s apron. The term is an accurate reference to a terrible time in the history of Scotland, when British Government forces, marching under the British flag, and under the command of Marshal Wade and the Duke of Cumberland, butchered wounded Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden and then moved through the countryside murdering any Scot, young or old, who they believed had favoured the Jacobite cause – and the SNP saw fit to offer an apology to the contemporary British unionists who have the brass neck to tell us we should be proud to be British and to fly their flag.

The SNP apology to its unionist opponents was an act of betrayal to the independence movement and to those who continue the fight for national liberation.

Campbell Martin is an independent MSP for the West of Scotland.