A FEW THOUGHTS FROM AN ENGLISH REFUGEE IN SCOTLAND

Our family moved from England to Scotland twenty five years ago. How would I have described this life change at the time? I guess I would have simply said we had moved. It didn't really feel like moving from one country to another. Instead it was more like shifting from one place to another.

Back then I was very much a Lancastrian. A northerner. And back then, the North of England and Scotland were very much shoulder to shoulder. We had suffered Thatcher in equal measure. Back then it was all about the North/South divide: and we were both the North. Or so it seemed to me.

With hindsight, I can see our move was something of a window into the future. My home town, Blackburn, was becoming increasingly toxic. Racism was both open and growing. Streets which in my youth had been Hovis advert friendly were now home to Union Flags, Dock Martins and snarling dogs.

It was no place to bring up our two mixed race boys. It was time to get out of Dodge.

We were fed up with living in town. In our last Blackburn year, my car was broken into twice before it was torched. Was this because we were a mixed race family? Who knows? The cops certainly didn't.

We wanted to bring the boys up in the countryside. Had we been able to afford it, I guess we would have moved somewhere in the Ribble Valley or Cumbria. But there was absolutely no chance.

So we headed across the border to a glen in Dumfries and Galloway where you didn't have to be a lawyer or a banker to live in the country.

And for years I never felt like either an immigrant or a refugee. Fair enough, there was plenty of England/Scotland banter, but that's all it was. Thankfully our two boys got the chance to grow up with minimal levels of racism.

Then things started to shift. Once the SNP won control of the levers of Scottish power, it became clearer with every passing day that things were miles better north of the border in almost every way. Of course I had a front row view of this as a foodbank manager. When I got ill, I was treated in a brilliant hospital. When my dad got ill, he was treated in a succession of dire Lancashire hospitals which seemed Third World in comparison. Slowly but surely Blackburn sank further and further into a mire of racism until it was as divided as Portadown.

And then came Indyref. I wrote a blog explaining why I planned to vote 'Yes' and suddenly found myself on an accidental rollercoaster. I got an invite to give my views as an English born 'Yes' voter to a town hall meeting in Lockerbie. I guess there were only about thirty people in the audience that night, but well over 5000 watched my efforts on YouTube once Reverend Stuart at 'Wings over Scotland' posted the video.

It's her, in case you're interested.

MY DEBUT FOR THE 'YES' CAMPAIGN

My next few months were unlike anything I had ever known before, and as the poignant misery of the dawn of 19 September broke, everything had changed. By now I absolutely wasn't British any more. I guess I never had been. Not really. 

Now I was Scottish.

And I realised we hadn't merely moved. We had emigrated. And like immigrants throughout history, we had become fiercely patriotic. Not for the old country. For the new country.

And then things changed again as the same virus which had infected my home town of Blackburn spread like a contagion all across England. From Carlisle to Torquay. England became polluted by a new aggressive ugliness which found a home in the cult of Brexit.

And for the first time, I realised we hadn't been migrants. We had been refugees. We had been a Jewish family who had seen the writing on the wall in 1930 and legged it out before the approaching storm started dropping trees and ripping off roofs. We had been a family of Ugandan Asians who had taken one look at Idi Amin and sold up everything before he took it at the point of a gun.

Last week I was chatting with a fellow refugee. A fellow New Scot who has been here for as long as we have been here and has gone similarly native. We got to talking about Brexit. Of course we did.

I said I was conflicted. A big part of me welcomes the prospect of a Hard Tory Brexit as the final nail in the coffin on Unionism.

But I still have lots of family south of the border and I fear for them once the horrendous implications of Johnson's self inflicted wound start to hit the streets. A Hard Brexit England won't be a good place to be if you happen to be either old like my mum or the wrong colour like Carol's family.

The guy I was talking to was as appalled as I am at the course our old country is set on. He told me of family members he can no longer stand to talk to.

We both shuddered at the thought of still being there. In England. In the land which had once been our home. And we both thanked our lucky stars we had seen the writing on the wall and got out. Left. Fled. Refugees who didn't grasp the fact that were were refugees. Not then. Not a quarter of a century ago.

But we do now.

I was in Glasgow for a conference last week. The venue was the Royal Glasgow Concert hall at the bottom end of Sauchiehall St. Eleven o'clock meant a comfort break and the chance to escape outside for some fresh air and nicotine. The front door to the venue sits on top of a flight of concrete stairs and a statue of Donald Dewer. I got a long view down a gun barrel straight Glasgow street to the Clyde.

I leaned against the wall and worked my way through a rollie. And I people watched. A busker was doing Lou Reed and Bowie whilst the world walked on by him. And suddenly it hit me. It really was like the world was walking by him. As in black, white and all colours in between.

My mind wandered back to the early eighties when I once upon a time drove through the night to hit the Barrows market at dawn to buy second hand Tweed overcoats for a quid each. By nine o clock, my old VW Beetle would be stuffed full and we would head to town for fifteen hours worth of drunken mayhem. Had I stood on the same steps back then, every one of the faces below would have been white.

Then I got to thinking about more recent visits to second city of the Empire. How would Sauchiehall St have looked five years ago in those grey autumn weeks after the heartbreak of 19 September? Sure, there would have been may more brown faces than there were in the days when Souness and King Kenny ruled the roost. But nothing like this. Nothing like now.

So why does Sauchiehall St suddenly look like Oxford St or 5^th Avenue? Are these people all tourists? In Glasgow on a wet autumn day? Not very likely.

Or all they immigrants who have beaten a path to Glasgow from all four corners of the earth? I doubt it. The Home Office in London still has its snarling guards on the Scottish door.

Then it hit me. These were almost certainly people like me. Internal refugees. People like me who have taken a ride up the M6 to a country which prides itself on the ability to still do common decency. People like me who's refugee journey involved Gretna services rather than Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty.

And of course there are no forms to fill in at Gretna services. No dotted lines to sign on. No oaths of allegiance to swear. No identity cards to apply for.

When a refugee flees up the M6 from England to Scotland, there is no official record. They just up sticks and move. There are no fences and watch towers and minefields.

How many are here already? And how many are planning to join the exodus? Old mates tell me it is already a common dinner table topic. Stay or go? How bad does it need to get? If my kids go to university in Scotland will they be able to get a Scottish passport?

As I stood and watched and smoked, I could see it right there in front of my eyes. It's here. It's now. It's happening.

Back in 1800 there were 10 million people in England and Wales, 8 million in Ireland and 6 million in Scotland. 24 million in total.

42% England and Wales. 33% Ireland. 25% Scotland.

Then shit happened. Lots of it. The Irish famine. The Highland Clearances. All the good stuff as London let us all know who's in charge. If shit hadn't happened, todays population might have looked something like this.

27 million people in England and Wales, 22 million in Ireland and 16 million in Scotland.

But shit DID happen. So now we have this.

England and Wales, 55 million. Ireland, 5 million. Scotland 5 million.

85% England and Wales. 7.5% Scotland. 7.5% Ireland.

We've seen this kind of thing before, right?

Montana 1800. Red Indians 100% White people 0%

Montana 2000 Red Indians 1% White people 99%

or

Vilnius, Lithuania 1940

Christians 60%, Jews 40%

Vilnius, Lithuania 1942

Christians 100%, Jews 0%

Thankfully our London rulers have never quite gone to such genocidal lengths to keep a grip on their closest colonies, though they came kind of close with the Irish Famine.

I guess this explains why we have so much space and not enough people.

Well after several hundred years worth of wall to wall shite, the boot seems to finally be on the other foot. The strutting Tories are like the bellowing bull and the governments of Dublin and Edinburgh are like the dancing matadors, delivering pain by a hundred carefully directed stabs.

All of a sudden people south of the border are waking up to fact that a better life awaits at the far end of the M6. And it seems like they are coming.

Like refugees.

Like I did. 

And very soon it won't just be people. It will be banks and businesses and and cash.

And by the time London notices, it will be far, far to late.

I'll make like the busker by the Donald Dewer statue and wind up with the words of Lou Reed.

“You're going to reap just what you sow....”