WHO’S a Scot? Some claim that it’s to do with where your ancestors came from. On a trip across the Pond I once encountered an American with a thick Southern yeehaw y’all accent who asserted that he was more Scottish than me, because all of his great-grandparents were Scottish, but many of mine were Irish. “Gaun dook fur chips ya choob,” I replied.

He didn’t understand me, which kind of proved my point. Then he got quite annoyed when I pointed out that there are people all of whose great-grandparents were Asian who are more Scottish than he was.

There is no-one in Scotland who doesn’t have at least some ancestors who originally came from somewhere else. We are not all entirely descended from the first humans to set foot on this land after the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age.

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Scottishness has nothing to do with where your ancestors came from. This nation was created by people who came from elsewhere. Scotland is the original mongrel nation, formed from the fusion of Picts, Irish Gaels, Cumbric Britons, Old English speaking Angles and Vikings. Over the centuries many other people from all over the world have migrated into this beautiful and infuriating country on the edge of a continent. English, Irish, Welsh, Flemings, Dutch, Danes, French, Roma, Jews, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Italians, Pakistanis, Chinese and many more have come to live in Scotland and added their threads to the glorious multicoloured tartan that defines Scotland.

Scottishness is not about where your ancestors were from, and it’s not even about where you were born. Everyone born in Scotland is Scottish, but not everyone who is Scottish was born in Scotland. Scottishness is a state of mind. Scotland is honoured by the presence of people who trace their roots to England, to Pakistan, to Syria, to Angola, or to any other part of the globe, who come to live in this country and choose to throw their lot in with us.

The Scottish independence movement is not about Scotland’s past, it’s about Scotland’s future, and that future is enriched by people from all over the world coming to Scotland to live here, to make their lives here, and to help create a future for Scotland.

There is a tiny fringe minority, reviled and rejected by the overwhelming bulk of the independence movement, whose concept of Scottish is defined by genetics and by ancestry. They represent a minuscule fraction, and have zero influence on the shape and direction of our movement. However because they choose to march in All Under One Banner rallies with a large and conspicuous banner, opponents of independence latch on to their presence and call on Nicola Sturgeon to ban SNP members from participating in these rallies – rallies which are not organised by the SNP.

We all know the reason why opponents of independence don’t organise rallies of their own. Whereas only a tiny and ridiculed minority of independence supporters are attracted to the far right and xenophobia, such people make up a considerable proportion of those opponents of independence who’d be likely to turn up for an anti-independence rally. The Orange Order, Britain First, the BNP, anti-Muslim fans of Tommy Robinson, they would all be present in significant numbers to show us the ugly face of British nationalism in Scotland. A rally opposing independence would be all but indistinguishable from a far-right march.

It is of course wrong and distasteful to associate ordinary mainstream opponents of independence with the far-right genetic essentialists of Britain First or the atavistic sectarian bigotry of the Orange Order. The vast majority of people who oppose independence are not racists or sectarian bigots. Yet the British nationalist media in Scotland constantly tries to associate the mainstream independence movement with the actions and activities of tiny groups who have far less numerical impact on the independence movement than their British nationalist equivalents have on the opposing side.

No-one invites groups like Siol nan Gaidheal, who have some ugly views about the English in Scotland, to participate in All Under One Banner rallies. They just turn up. Nicola Sturgeon is no more responsible for them than Ruth Davidson is responsible for the Orange Order or Britain First.

However we’ve yet to see an opinion piece in the British nationalist media in Scotland calling on Ruth Davidson to condemn the support of such groups for Scotland remaining a part of the UK. That’s an even more startling omission given the repeated outing of Scottish Conservative councillors as having links to far-right or sectarian groups. I’ve yet to see a single SNP councillor being identified as a supporter of the likes of Siol nan Gaidheal. I’ve lost count of the Conservative councillors identified as supporters of the Orange Order, or who have propagated far-right propaganda on social media.

If the British nationalists in Scotland want to taint the SNP with association with far-right ethnic nationalists, perhaps their cries would have a lot more credibility if they tackled the actual fascists and racists who infest their own ranks. There are a lot more of them. Get your own British nationalist house in order first, and then the independence movement might be prepared to listen.