SNP and a flap over a Union flag
JOHN COOPER’S
ALL politics is local, so join me on a jaunt to my neck of the woods – the Ayrshire Riviera, where the views over the Clyde are spectacular. The jewel is Largs, with its esplanade, Nardini’s café and the Pencil, monument to a 1263 battle in which we defeated the last of the Vikings. (Legend has it we won by dint of a spirited cavalry charge up the beach and by throwing stones at Vikings still aboard their longships.)
But this is North Ayrshire, an area rated high for child poverty. Like everyone else, people here struggle to get by, worried about jobs and bills. Urban decay sits cheek by jowl with rural deprivation.
No shortage of issues, then, for local MP Patricia Gibson. But she is a member of the SNP and so must put the fight to free Scotland above all else.
So when constituents reported a rogue flagpole in Largs, she picked up the cudgels. This will not stand!
The pole is high on a wall and hardly massive. Despite frequent visits, I had not even noticed it. Miss Gibson raised the eyesore with North Ayrshire Council – and came a cropper.
Conservative councillor Tom Marshall reckoned the issue was the flag, not the pole. Yes, someone had the temerity to fly the British flag here in, er, Britain.
Mr Marshall said: ‘I see no issue with flying the UK flag and surely she has better things to do? Planning is a council, not Westminster, issue.’
Flags are potent – in Northern Ireland, the most intractable issues are about what flies on which pole and when.
To Miss Gibson and many in the SNP, the Union flag is a symbol of an alien power, outrider for an oppressive Westminster. That’s the same Westminster that Miss Gibson sits in and, of course, accepts a fat salary from. Her MP colleague George Kerevan touted for votes on the basis he wanted to be sent there – ‘the heart of the enemy camp’.
We must resist this ‘us and them’ attitude, the most invidious threat to the cohesion of the UK.
The SNP like to pretend those of us north of the imaginary line that is the border with England are very different from people to the south. Yes, we have different accents and like different things – Irn-Bru, not dandelion & burdock; tattie scones and not stottie. But on key issues, we are indivisible.
A survey shows our concerns about Brexit are the just the same as the rest of the UK – we want immigration regulated, we want the Customs checks on people and goods that England seeks.
MISS Gibson said the Largs flag was ‘designed to be provocative’. Yet the SNP have weaponised the Saltire, annexing it as their flag and not Scotland’s – the Scotland of Tory and Labour and Lib Dem voter alike. They constantly conflate the wishes of their narrow band of supporters with ‘the will of the people’.
And now, when an MP who really ought to be busier spends time agitating over a Union flag, in whose fabric is woven our collective history, we must say: ‘Enough!’
My grandfather and millions of others played their role in curbing German aggression in the Great War under the Union flag. It led the way at D-Day when we began the lethal work of freeing Europe from Hitler’s shackles.
I don’t want Union flags on every street, but I do want my MP to tackle issues that matter to more than just her supporters.
And I cannot abide the SNP peddling the shabby nonsense that somehow being Scots makes us superior to anyone else on these islands and that the Union flag has no place here.