David Albert Mann

Scotland...Almost Afraid to Know Itself (resubmitted) David Albert Mann

Most Scots are not descended from the Gaels, but of mixed Anglian, Celtic, Viking and Norman blood like the rest of us. Much of the Border Raiding was south for cattle and extortion, whilst the English only went north to try to stop it; sometimes by forcing formal submission. Scottish academics claim a centuries-old policy of genocide, but the reality is that most cruelty and oppression has been Scot-on-Scot. Sensible and humane Scots chose Union in order to put an end to slavery, the burning alive of women as witches, legal torture, feudal oppression, and the endemic poverty that annually brought famine to large parts of the country; it led to the flowering Scotland in science and thought, and vast improvements in agriculture and industry; to a British Empire largely powered by Scots; and to regular subsidies from the English that continue to this day. This study reveals how primary-school textbooks misrepresent all of this in order to inculcate a hatred of the English, prompted by university historians who ought to know better, encouraging a fatalism and despair, particularly among the young, that contribute to disproportionately high levels of physical and mental ill-health. The English do not reciprocate this hatred; hence the free passage of Scots into England and the opportunity to prosper there. The Scots, it argues, owe it to their children to snap out of it and put their educational house in order.