Nothing to gain from division
THE scene was at once typical and rueful. Driving into small town Scotland a few months ago with someone I have known for years, we went looking for, of all things, a garden centre.
It was shut but it was only a short drive to a rival shop which, I suggested, might be open later.
“I’m not going there, they’re English,” my companion quipped as they turned the wheel away.
Having escaped, their inner voice revealed the person at the core.
A remonstration and an apology aside, we haven’t broached the subject since. I don’t know if talking would change anything. Shaming people out of their point of view is for Holywood screenwriters and the passing places to Damascus.
But I doubt if my experience or that emotion are a rare thing. The same attitude can be found behind steering wheels in any small town from Belgium to Belgrade.
Fear of the stranger is common. Like casual racism, like casual sexism, xenophobia has to be guarded against.
But when the impulse is harnessed to a political movement and the mould then turned inside out into some kind of benign liberation theology, then challenging attitudes is all the harder.
These few seconds were the most depressing political moment for me last year. The political is always personal in the end.
The scene played back to me at the weekend in the controversy surrounding Sadiq Khan saying the unsayable on nationalism and racism.
Thousands of Scots will get what Khan said, even if he did himself no favours by conflating two separate human impulses.
No one has yet explained what is good about dividing people based on who they are.