Anger over councillor’s ‘second class Scots’ taunt
VOTERS who oppose independence are ‘second class’ Scots, according to an SNP politician.
The offensive comment by Angus councillor Bill Duff sparked fury yesterday but party chiefs have declined to take disciplinary action.
Mr Duff, who represents the Montrose and District ward, wrote on Twitter: ‘The choice is do you want to be first class Scot, running own country or second class one that let’s [sic] someone else?”
Last night, Labour MSP Jackie Baillie said: ‘This gives a worrying insight into what senior SNP figures really think about Scots.
‘ The idea that voting for Scotland to stay in the UK makes you any less a Scot is as false as it is offensive. Given Alex Salmond’s history in suggesting anybody who votes No is less Scottish, it’s not surprising other elected SNP officials think this way.’
Nationalist l eaders have repeatedly accused pro-Union Scots of ‘ talking Scotland down’ in recent years, while Labour politicians such as Jim Murphy have been branded ‘traitors’.
Mr Duff, who worked for 27 years in the chemical industry, deleted his Tweet yesterday evening.
He did not return phone calls but a party spokesman said: ‘The point Bill Duff was seeking to make is that Scotland the country will have first class status with independence, no offence was intended and he has deleted the Tweet... we believe this draws a line under the matter.’
Mr Duff is not the first SNP member to cause offence on social media.
Patrick Scott Hogg, a Nationalist council candidate in 2012 for Cumbernauld, Lanarkshire, said he would set up a ‘civil disobedience group’ to press forward the case for breaking from the Union.
Lyall Duff, a council candidate in North Lanarkshire, was suspended by leaders for criticising two Catholic midwives who refused to carry out abortions. He suggested that Mary Doogan and Concepta Wood were ‘ moneygrabbing old witches’ who should be fired and forced to become cleaners.
Last week, Alex Salmond was accused of ducking the chance to ‘clean-up’ the poisonous referendum debate after refusing to sack a top aide accused of a ‘smear’ campaign.
The First Minister said his special adviser Campbell Gunn had made a ‘ mistake and a misjudgment’ but defied calls from all three opposition leaders to fire him.
The controversy began when Mr Gunn sent an email to a newspaper i n an apparent attempt t o undermine a Labour-supporting mother of a disabled child who urged voters to reject independence. He apologised to 33-year- old Clare Lally but the distraught carer rejected his offer.
Miss Lally was separately accused by online Cybernats of being a ‘traitor’ who would be ‘first against the wall when we get independence’, a ‘liar’ and a ‘quisling’.
There was also an outpouring of abuse against Harry Potter author JK Rowling when she said she loved Scotland and wanted ‘ to see it thrive’.
An Edinburgh-based charity, which later claimed its Twitter account had been hacked, published a post that described the author as a ‘bitch’.
Other Twitter users called the writer a ‘whore’ and a ‘union cow’.