Claim:
There have been high profile attacks on English people and symbols such as the English flag over the last ten or more years. These would increase as a result of independence.
Facts:
English people in Scotland worry about being shunned or attacked by Scots. The media fuels this worry by highlighting any such incidents. Yet they have the wrong end of the stick. When a recent annual police report indicated an increase on attacks on 'white British', the Scottish media spent a week blaming Scots for racism and ratcheting up English fears. A week later the details of the police report were released. The breakdown showed that the increase was due to attacks on 'white Scots'. No-one reported this except pro-independence website newsnetscotland.com.
When Murray Watson (an Englishman) studied the attitudes of English people living in Scotland, he discovered an interesting discrepancy. Almost everyone was concerned they might be singled out for their accent or Englishness. Yet almost none had any personal experience to report.
Let us not pretend Scotland is not racist. Any black or Asian person growing up in Scotland could tell you that. But fears over anti-Englishness are out of proportion to their reality, inflated by a media whose agenda is to sow discord.
If anything, it is Scotland's current status as a non-state that is more likely than independence to lead to frustrations against English people being vocalised. The Irish certainly used to dislike England. But how often do you hear of Irish racism towards England nowadays? They have their own lives to get on with - and themselves to blame when things go wrong.
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