"What we need in Scotland is another Ulster."

Hugh MacDiarmid (real name Christopher Grieve) was Scotland's greatest poet since Burns. He was also a man of unusual politics--a supporter of Scottish independence all his life, he was expelled from the SNP for communism--and then joined the Communist party, from which he would be expelled for Scottish nationalism. He was also in his (relative) youth a sympathizer with Fascism. Incidentally, he rejoined the Communist party after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 (which he justified, as he did the invasion of Czechoslovakia twelve years later) just as other intellectuals were leaving it in droves...

Anyway, if there was one consistent thread in MacDiarmid's politics, it was his hatred of England. (In answer to a questionnaire, he once listed "Anglophobia" as his hobby. In a late poem, he wrote that he did not want to be called "British" because it was too much like "brutish.") His politics led him to make many statements for which he was criticized, but the one probably most often singled out as reprehensible was one made in the 1970's during the Troubles in Northern Ireland:

"What we need in Scotland is another Ulster." http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12712632.SUPREME_IRONIES/

Dystopian challenge: Make it happen.
 
Hugh MacDiarmid (real name Christopher Grieve) was Scotland's greatest poet since Burns. He was also a man of unusual politics--a supporter of Scottish independence all his life, he was expelled from the SNP for communism--and then joined the Communist party, from which he would be expelled for Scottish nationalism. He was also in his (relative) youth a sympathizer with Fascism. Incidentally, he rejoined the Communist party after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 (which he justified, as he did the invasion of Czechoslovakia twelve years later) just as other intellectuals were leaving it in droves...

Anyway, if there was one consistent thread in MacDiarmid's politics, it was his hatred of England. (In answer to a questionnaire, he once listed "Anglophobia" as his hobby. In a late poem, he wrote that he did not want to be called "British" because it was too much like "brutish.") His politics led him to make many statements for which he was criticized, but the one probably most often singled out as reprehensible was one made in the 1970's during the Troubles in Northern Ireland:

"What we need in Scotland is another Ulster." http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12712632.SUPREME_IRONIES/

Dystopian challenge: Make it happen.
 
as a scot who lost close family on the troubles I find this thred sick and repugnant.

what Scotland and the rest of the UK needed was honest debate.

A debate that you may have missed was decided a couple of years ago!
 
as a scot who lost close family on the troubles I find this thred sick and repugnant.

what Scotland and the rest of the UK needed was honest debate.

A debate that you may have missed was decided a couple of years ago!

@David T isn't making a judgement on whether it would be a good thing (hell, he made it a dystopia challenge) but he's just asking how it could have happened.
 
Have the Troubles cross the North Channel. There's a lot of sectarian feeling in Glasgow to this day; it was stronger in the past, and underlies a lot of the gang situation in Glasgow. It wouldn't take too much to get Orangemen and Irish nationalists in the west of Scotland to take up arms against one another in sympathy with their counterparts in Northern Ireland.

From there, when Scottish nationalism becomes more prominent I suspect that Unionist paramilitaries would cheerfully deem them just as bad as Irish nationalists and use the same tactics against them. Given the probable makeup of such paramilitaries, I suspect this would mean that Scottish nationalism remains a primarily rural phenomenon.
 
The Orange Lodges were strong in Glasgow. There is a history of anti-Catholicism - see Pastor Jack Glass for example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Glass and the Rev John White - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_White_(minister). White was the instigator of an anti-Irish tirade - http://www.scribd.com/doc/152217519/Menace-of-the-Irish-Race-to-our-Scottish-Nationality

I think all the elements were there, but for one key element, namely the Scots had not been treated so abominably by the English as the Irish had. Change taht in some way and it wouldn't take much.
 
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