Richard Walker isn’t angry. And he doesn’t want you to be angry, either. At least, not so as anybody would know. It’s understandable that you might be angry. Your anger is justified. But if you want to be accepted as a genuine independence activist then you must not let that anger show. Inwardly, you may be seething with anger. Outwardly, you must be happy. You must be clappy. Above all, you must be positive. Positive! Positive! Positive!
Richard will now lead the Yes movement in a chorus of Kumbaya. Tea and Xanax will be served.
How I weary of the self-righteous posturing that has become the preferred pastime of pro-independence politicians and pundits. I don’t approve of the verbal assault on the BBC’s James Cook outside the Tory leadership hustings in Perth. Not because it was a particularly serious assault. Certainly not because James Cook is supposedly a “stand-up sort of guy”. Most assuredly not because he is a journalist and therefore allowed to act with impunity. I disapproved of the invective hurled at Cook by an irate demonstrator because it was horribly unimaginative. And because the term ‘traitor’ should never be used lightly. And because it was reactive. By all accounts, Cook was in the faces of the demonstrators with his phone camera when one of them let rip. Some might see this as provocative. Richard Walker says,
Their verbal abuse of BBC’s Scotland editor James Cook was a mistake on so many levels that it needs to be called out for the mindless stupidity that encouraged it.
Public abuse of those who disagree undermines the independence movement
Richard might want to consider the possibility that some of that “mindless stupidity” was Cook’s.
There are some things that it’s right to be angry about. There are things which it’s wrong not to be angry about. That anger must never be allowed to turn to uncontrolled rage. It should be used as a source of energy. It should be harnessed and deployed judiciously to add power to arguments. The demonstrator who shouted at James Cook was wrong, not because he insulted a journalist, but because he let his anger get out of control. It is quite possible that James Cook was pressing buttons hoping for a reaction that would make ‘good TV’ ─ for which read dumbed-down sensationalism. The mistake made by shouty-bloke was that he let his buttons be pressed.
Own your anger! Use it for your purposes! Never let others use it against you! And never let anybody tell you that your anger should be concealed as if it was something to be ashamed of. The shame lies in not being angered by what the British state is doing to Scotland and what the Tories are doing to people across the UK. The disgrace belongs to those inside Perth Concert Hall who remain unmoved by the plight of the victims of British government corruption and incompetence. The shame belongs to those who regard as normal and entirely proper the farcical process by which some otherwise unemployable buffoon is elevated to the highest office having risen through the British political system entirely by avoiding responsibility, shifting blame and concealing their own misdeeds as well as those of people whose favour they seek. The ones who wallow in ignominy are those who suppose their privilege outweighs the popular will. Those who think it not only acceptable to deny Scotland’s democracy but righteously proper to destroy Scotland’s democracy.
If ever we needed an illustration of the power, privilege and patronage that constitutes the British state then the interminable Tory leadership circus will do the job.
Anger is appropriate. Why should it be suppressed? Who the hell are these people who imagine they are entitled to devise a ‘code of conduct’ to apply to the entire Yes movement? What informs their purse-lipped strictures but their own agendas as well as their prejudices and their virtue-signalling wisishness?
Each individual is responsible for their own conduct. Those who say exhibiting anger helps our opponents should reflect on who is helped by the Yes movement being constrained by fear of being condemned by those who will condemn us regardless. The most insidious form of censorship is self-censorship informed by someone else’s priorities and preferences. Self-discipline is a fine and necessary thing. But not when the parameters are defined by those who benefit by limiting your ability to protest against their iniquities. No injustice was ever rectified without those responsible being called out by those angered by injustice. No social or political reform ever happened without people demanding change loudly and angrily.
Are you angry yet? You bloody well should be! And everybody should know it! Because the opposite of anger is not reasonableness and respectfulness. The opposite of anger is acceptance. And what is happening is not acceptable!
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Peter A Bell 
Spot on!
The people I’m feeling most angry at right now (apart from the despicable Tories but that is a default position), are our lesser-spotted elected representatives.
The Tories are dragging us into hell in a handcart and I hear nothing from our own fat cat MPs and MSPs.
Are they all sunning themselves on Greek islands with their UK passports and their £83K pa plus expenses and perks?
Do they reserve their harrumphing and righteous indignation only for days when they are on payroll?
They have been massively innefective and are as much to blame for this unfolding hell for our people as any Tory voter!
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Richard Walker said this is why Both Votes SNP is best way to ensure independence that was on the 8th of April 2021, the two votes for SNP worked a treat for the unionist.
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In the vast majority of cases, both votes SNP was a perfectly sensible voting strategy. It is certainly the only one the SNP could recommend. You seem to one of those still clinging to the ‘supermajority’ myth. Although, given that it’s shite, it may be more likely it’s clinging to you.
https://peterabell.scot/2021/04/17/fantasy-politics-and-problematic-arithmetic/
https://peterabell.scot/2021/04/29/the-observations-of-mr-buzzkill/
BTW _ the 2021 Holyrood election polling day was 6 May.
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Yes, indeed, Peter, had the SNP had any real intention of utilising the 1 & 2 votes for independence. What they actually did was ensure another term for themselves and having to make half-hearted efforts to convince people that they are “doing something”. Nothing, I think, has shown so starkly the lack of power that resides at Holyrood, and the absolute determination to hang on to that lack of power.
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Peter, for starters you don’t have the foresight like Mr Salmond does, if you did you wouldn’t have got it so wrong about Nicola Sturgeon and that you were dead certain that a Ref was going to happen in 2018, which it didn’t. Mr Salmond was right about a Supermajority this is a statement from David Frost “I would suggest 75 percent of seats in the Scottish Parliament in favour of independence, over a 10-year period, legally binding. Without that, a referendum should simply be impossible.” Mr Salmond was right to suggest a supermajority and pre-empting stipulation by a Tory Westminster government, if the SNP had worked with other Pro-Indy parties, we’d have 90 Pro-MSP majority and a bigger voice for Independence and Scotland.
Regarding “Richard Walker said this is why Both Votes SNP is best way to ensure independence that was on the 8th of April 2021, the two votes for SNP worked a treat for the unionist.” Richard said this in The Rag on 08.04.21 and I know the election was In May.
Although you’ve left the SNP you still have that Yellow Tory strip down your back and seem set in your ways without seeing the change that’s need for Independence to happen until people like you can see what’s need, I don’t hold out much hope.
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I was never “dead certain” there would be a referendum in 2018. I urged that there should be a referendum in 2018. But by late 2015 or early 2016 it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen. I continued to campaign for #Referendum2018 because it was important that somebody did. If you were capable of being at all detached and dispassionate about these matters you’d recognise that all the problems which now beset the SNP and the Yes movement can be traced back to 2015/2016 and the failure to provide the leadership the campaign needed. None of what ensued would have happened if there had been an actual campaign for a real referendum.
I see you didn’t bother to read my articles explaining why the supermajority thing was a load of crap.
As for the rest, you’re just another one of those people who put party and personality before Scotland’s cause. Just like the SNP loyalists. I have no patience for any of this tribal shite.
BTW – The “Yellow Tory strip down your back” remark marks you as an idiot. Right now, all the people who know me are laughing at you.
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Yes, I’m angry. I’m mad as hell!
Mostly I’m annoyed at Richard Walker.
Richard Walker epitomises all that is wrong with the leadership of the SNP and those in the media and elsewhere who parrot the party line. So the ‘Soft Nos’ might be offended. Who cares! If there ever were, there are certainly no ‘Soft Nos’ now in any case. And it wouldn’t matter anyway – people are hungry and afraid. Mr Walker says ‘calm down, calm down’. Who does he think he is, living in his media middle class bubble?
James Cook is journalist. An experienced one. A hardened one. His skin would make a nice fit for a rhinoceros. A verbal outburst won’t bother him too much – he’s not a wilting violet. Walker seems to have overlooked that Cook works for the BBC … hardly an advocate of Scottish Independence. People are annoyed by that … that’s why they don’t pay the broadcasting tax (apart from the fact that they can’t afford it now anyway).
However, I think the real reason that Walker and his luvvie press colleagues condemn the shouting is that they feel that they are losing control of the masses. And that means they become no longer relevant.
When that occurs things might actually happen regarding the rumbling revolution that is Scotland’s Cause.
Vive la revolution!
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The “losing control” remark is very relevant. They (I think you know who I mean) don’t want us angry because angry people are hard to control.
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Talking of losing control, it looks like SNP is already losing control of events with their ultra cautious don’t offend anybody approach.
They are losing control of the agenda as we see the tories go all out now, with their assault on Devolution and upon Scotland itself.
We have the Brexit fanatic Mr “Lord” Frost, unelected to anything, ever, declaring Independence to be morally wrong!
He also wants Devolution to “evolve back”, tho back to what, we wonder?
Tories in Scotland who oppose Devolution should be mindful of the fact, without it, they would be gone.
They like to forget that, or think everything will go back to the way it was in the good old days of Thatcher.
Of course their pals in England couldn’t care if they were gone..
Thus, we see the results of all this persuasion and soft as possible approach…..Nothing!
What we do see is fanatical anti Scottish tories now totally out of control in their attempts to destroy this country.
It is way past time SNP leadership should be angry enough to really stand up for Scotland, rather than just give outraged speeches that get us nowhere.
More and more of us have had enough of it!
We’d like to think the First Minister can sense this anger too, and act upon it for Scotland, rather than try to continue as is.
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Steamin! The control freaks of the SNP – MPs, MSPs, civil service, SPADS, loyalists – are just wrong, Peter. On marches, the call: “Tories, OUT! OUT! OUT” was expressed by people who know fine well where a great deal of the blame lies. Since Thatcher, when we entered a wholly different realm of vicious oppression by the money-grabbers, not seen since Victorian days, and it has become worse and worse over the past forty+ years, as each new generation (funny that, there have been at least six generations of Tories in just over 40 years, but Scots have to wait for a hundred years for another indyref) tries to make things unendurable to breaking point for the classes who were put on Earth to serve their masters. How very dare they strike or hold rallies and protests!
The SNP is a busted flush for all sorts of reasons. This is the party that lays down diktats that we must be nice to our opponents who rarely reciprocate. I don’t even read or listen to their total s***e these days because they know perfectly well that kissing Unionist and British State and ‘trans’ bahookies is a waste of time; and it really doesn’t taste very nice either. The National is full of cringing letters today, admonishing us on unacceptable behaviour, telling us that the soft NOs, who don’t exist and have never existed, will be upset. No, I don’t condone the abuse hurled at Mr Cook either, but I can understand where it came from – if, indeed, it did come from a genuine independence supporter who had flipped his lid. I well recall the miners’ strike and the agents provocateurs who screamed abuse at police and egged on real miners to do the same. Not saying this chap was one, but we should never take things at face value.
This “just be nice” has all but destroyed female rights, and the very same b******s are demanding that we “just be nice” to people who are anything but nice to us; between them all, Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, journalists and appeasers in the SNP, they have driven, and continue to drive, Scots to the edge of extinction, many of the British people to a hop and skip from starvation and early death through cold and hunger. They have stood by while our resources are plundered at bargain basement prices, with no return to the public purse, while the rich grow richer off the backs of the poor. Richard Walker and his water-livered appeasers can f-off. We are angry and we will say so.
If, on occasion, it goes too far, ask them when they are going to stop killing their own people and allowing them to be killed through policies that benefit no one but their own clique, and when our journalists are going to stop turning away from the truth. They are part of the establishment, all of them. Moderate behaviour is a two-way street. I can hear that French aristocrat berating the screaming mother of the child he has just crushed under his carriage wheels, exhorting her to stop swearing and hurling abuse at him: the child should not have been in his way. Cue the tumbrels, the sound of Madame Guillotine falling and heads rolling into baskets. These eejits never learn.
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lorncal. “I well recall the miners’ strike and the agents provocateurs”. as do I, vividly, and that thought immediately sprung to mind on hearing of this, the fact naebody wis ‘lifted’ fur it seems to confirm the point for me.
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The bourgeoisie still appear to think that this is just the proletariat behaving badly.
The greatest trick the devils ever played was convincing the world that politics was about Left vs Right when it was always really the Haves vs the Have Nots. All the political parties are on the side of the Haves. It will be interesting to see what the Have Nots do about this.
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Absolutely right, Peter. James Cook cannot have “read the room”. The anger was palpable. He (or his Producer) was stupid to think it would be possible to have a “civilised conversation” with an angry crowd. Some people can express their anger verbally, but others do so vocally. And who is Richard Walker or Nicola Sturgeon or anyone else to sit in judgment between the 2 approaches or write and re-write “codes of conduct”? Instead they should be analysing the reasons for the anger and doing something about it.
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That’s the shorter version of my blog. Thanks, Julian.
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They won’t do anything, Julian, because they are incapable of doing so. They lack any reflective thinking or awareness, and they are too fond of the life style they enjoy. They will come to understand, but it will be too late for them.
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I don’t think they will ever come to understand. They’ll simply rationalise it away with the notion that it’s a far-right takeover.
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
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Angry? Am fair stottin, nearly fit for bindin . Roll on the assertion of Claim of Right and the proper exercise of the Sovereignty of the Scottish people .The trick will be to harness cold analytical rage to the cause of independence . No more marching up and doon that hill in Grand Old Duke of York mode .
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As John L:ydon famously sang. “Anger is an energy”!
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Mr Lydon was paraphrasing William Blake . Yrs * a pedant * 🙂
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I like this –
“ANGER is very useful as energy in the present moment. But trapped in the mind as a story about the past or an intention for the future, anger is toxic. If we de-link the anger from mental images of past and future, feeling it directly in the body, we are energized for creativity. We are so much more powerful when we use anger to be creative, rather than critical.”
https://yourradiance.blogspot.com/2015/09/anger-is-energy.html
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Likewise Peter . The use to which anger is put is crucial
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Anger is a natural human emotion, but as you infer. It needs to be coherent and have a purpose. It’s very easy to lose control in a group of your peers when your enemy is taunting you.
We have all lost control and ended up not saying what we wanted to say. Don’t let BBC journalists do this to us. Deep breath and think before speaking.
Cook is a pompous arse, but he isn’t well informed. Defeat him with facts.
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Even better Jock …..ignore the .uckers . They have no interest in being persuaded . Ditto the MSM in general . Sooner * we * stop pandering to them the better , they will never be on the side of Independence
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I am glad to see that so many of us are angry. Anger is a cleansing agent.
When good men do nothing, evil prevails.
If the sample of feelings in this group is replicated throughout the population of Scotland and is directed at the the dual causes of this anger – Tory greed and SNP inactivity/collusion – could it provide the impetus required to bring about change?
Things could get interesting. I have a feeling the politicians have made some serious miscalculations.
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