Sometimes you can smell the stench of racism before you are actually upon it. As a child, I recall walking on the sands of one of Scotland’s most popular beaches and wondering why the whiff of human waste hung heavy in the air. A broken sewerage pipe on a grass verge held the answer. When you encounter racism in the raw or the utter absence of compassion at the plight of people fleeing death and torture it’s like looking into an open sewer.

Liberal Scots like to portray their country as a beacon of progressiveness and enlightenment. We have piled this on remorselessly during this period when it seems that dark money and bent algorithms are seeking to bring about the anarchy of the unregulated state in England. The former first minister of Scotland Jack McConnell stated baldly 16 years ago that we needed many more migrants and asylum seekers to sustain a Scottish economy under pressure from low birthrates and an ageing population. His comments followed a survey in which almost a quarter of Scots admitted to being “slightly racist” and almost half felt that deploying terms such as “paki” and “chinky” in relation to shops and food was acceptable.

At a time when the UK government is seeking to repulse foreign workers, Scotland has never needed them more

Earlier this year, the Scottish government published a research paper informing its “New Scots” refugee integration strategy to 2022. In a section about racism and discrimination experienced by refugees and asylum seekers, it said: “Many responses drew attention to the level of racism and discrimination that refugees and asylum seekers experience. Examples were given of refugees and asylum seekers having experienced racism and discrimination in workplaces, other institutions, their local communities and schools.”

This came out barely two years after the resettlement of a number of refugee families throughout Scotland, including on the Isle of Bute, just off the west coast. This island is one of those former holiday destinations trying to reinvent itself in the face of depopulation, rising unemployment and economic decay. Several local people protested that Bute had enough problems of its own to solve without trying to deal with those of another people.

The refugee families, though, have begun to bring forth a new generation of Scots-Syrian babies and are opening businesses to stimulate the economy. Even some of those who sought to create a hostile environment for them have been won over. It seems that basic human interaction has revealed two inescapable truths: these people are no different from us and they have fled unspeakable horrors that few, if any, in even the most impoverished places in the west of Scotland, will ever encounter.

Amid the post-Brexit fallout as it affects foreigners – EU and non-EU alike – is some collateral debris that will come to feature significantly when a second referendum on Scottish independence is finally called. At a time when the UK government is seeking to repulse foreign workers and families, Scotland has never needed them more. Its population is living longer, fewer babies are being born and the NHS will be denuded of essential foreign workers. Scotland is facing a catastrophe in its future ability to deliver social care to its elderly and vulnerable. Yet some of the attitudes apparent in the responses to the handful of small refugee boats rescued last week in the Channel are apparent in Scotland too.

Three years after a picture of a dead Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach stunned the world, Nigel Farage tweeted: “…what is to stop thousands more coming?” The Daily Express referred to a “taxi service” in the Channel. Charlie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, demanded that the government “get a grip”. The Daily Telegraph screamed: “Send back migrants or risk tragedy.”

A false narrative of organised crime and Islamic State sleepers lay just below the surface. There was no mention of an increasingly hostile pan-European immigration policy in response to electoral advances by far-right and racist groups. In none of these responses was the slightest hint of basic human compassion. Each was impervious to the suffering endured by many of these mere few huddled bundles of humanity, many fleeing the consequences of historic western failure and greed in their homelands.

We talk of our pride at being Scottish or English or British. What bizarre and foolish concepts

Did these people, who lament England’s diminishing Christian heritage, ever read the parable of the Good Samaritan? Are they happy simply to wash their hands of these, their fellow human beings, and not to distress themselves with thoughts of what might happen to these souls if we were indeed to “get a grip”?

As we root around in these dark places seeking righteousness for our indignation, we talk about protecting “our” borders and “our” identity. At other times, we talk of our “pride” at being Scottish or English or British. What bizarre and foolish concepts. It’s like being proud of having two eyes. They imply that being “Scottish” or “English” or “British” is to be bound by loftier values. Yet when we travel we find that people are all really the same: they respond well to kindness; they like to share what they have; they want to bequeath peace to their children. Our nationality is an accident of birth. We do not own this country: we are merely stewards of its resources and I hope one day that we will be judged on how well we have shared them.

England does indeed need to “get a grip”. If it doesn’t, it will become a furious, implacable and unforgiving place. Let’s welcome these refugees at Dover and share with them what remains of our bloated western Christmas.

• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist