Norway and the SNP

There's a certain contradiction in Joyce McMillan's article in today's Scotsman. On the one hand she berates right-wing commentary on recent events in Norway as "some truly disgraceful coverage of the Norwegian shooting, dripping with schadenfreude", while at the same time slamming an "almost religious belief in greater marketisation" in the context of the UK's economic problems.

But it's the market fundamentalism of immigration that has created many of the self-evident tensions and the concomitant rise of the racist right. She ascribes to elements of "Britain's elite" a "belief in policies that often involve inflicting pain on blameless people". Yet this can be precisely what immigration does, driving down wages and conditions for those at the bottom of the heap, or even putting them out of a job. Which makes Joyce's talk of the merits of maternity leave and "empowering women" even more academic for such people than it might have been before the economic detriment caused by mass immigration. Which in turn perhaps underlines why I thought the likes of Joyce were actually the elite, in Scotland at least!

Of course, the liberal elites prefer to brush past such inconvenient arguments, preferring instead to concentrate on the 'melting pot' sort of rationale for immigration, or in perhaps more contemporary parlance the "high levels of trust and cohesion in Norway's successful social-democratic society", as Joyce puts it, or the usual stuff about 'integration', 'tolerance' and a 'multi-cultural society'.

However, the reality is often very different, and it's probably this kind of thing that Joyce slightly hysterically refers to as "dripping with schadenfreude":

In recent years, however, Norway started receiving immigration from around the world, and Islam has become the second biggest religion. Given Norway’s homogeneous insularity, the impact of such different cultures has been even bigger than it was in Britain in the 1960s. Casual racism is rife. Only in Norway have I heard someone order a taxi and request that the driver is white. News reports can display an unwitting racism that is shocking to British ears. There is a widespread unease about the way the country is changing, which even mainstream politicians play on, with anti-immigration rhetoric more inflammatory than anything you will hear in Britain.

By the same token, in the Scottish Review John Cameron says: "[The Norwegians] did not want to spoil their lonely idyll by joining the EU or becoming multicultural and the recent influx of Islamic refugees was met with fierce anti-immigration rhetoric."

Of course, the likes of the main quote above will be dismissed as merely the right-wing views of a Boris Johnson aide writing in the Telegraph. However, even Lesley Riddoch - Joyce's Scotsman and (broadly) ideological stablemate - said: "Even ethnic Norwegians are thought strange if they don't want their kids to play outdoors (fully equipped) in minus 28. So the demand for segregated play by some Muslim parents can seem to threaten the kindergarten system which underpins gender equality in the workplace."

But while Lesley Riddoch seems to think the kind of resentment engendered by examples like this can be overcome, the reality is perhaps something else.

Naturally the left thinks it's all the fault of the right for not being tolerant and integrationist enough, but when immigrant populations themselves are often intolerant and isolationist the potential for tension is obvious, never mind the more radical strands of ethnic ideology and theocracy. Equally, for the liberal left intolerance, misogyny and homophobia seems to be excused when it's imported, but it's a different story when homegrown.

Indeed, that's just the cultural conflict aspect of immigration - which has dominated the debate in the last week or so - never mind the potential for economic conflict mentioned at the outset.

And the point for us is that the SNP often posit Norway as representing some kind of economic and social exemplar for an independent Scotland and their vision of 'civic nationalism'. Hence Unionist blogger Braveheart describes (for the purposes of critique) Norway thus: "Open, modern, progressive, democratic, socially cohesive, free in association and liberal in attitudes with highly educated population and a relaxed approach to personal relations, race and religion. For many people a model of how a modern democracy can and should be organised."

But now we know that the idealism and rhetoric don't quite match up to the reality.

On the other hand, the civic nationalists and many of those on the left will point to Scotland's relatively trouble-free experience of immigration and draw simplistic conclusions therefrom. But the relatively positive scenario here is presumably due merely to the limited scale of immigration in Scotland rather than anything else - are we really fundamentally more tolerant than the English, or indeed the many other European countries which have demonstrated increasing tensions associated with immigration, or is it simply a question of numbers?

In the unlikely event that Joyce McMillan will read this she will no doubt have me down as one of the "wild men of the ideological right" and of course the kneejerk reaction of others is to shout 'racism'.

But intolerance begets intolerance, and Joyce's article unwittingly demonstrates the downside of the application of liberal economics to immigration.

Of course, it should go without saying that the actions of one deranged individual are effectively irrelevant to the immigration debate as a whole, but one unpalatable consequence of events from a week ago is to shine a light on questions that many prefer to remain in denial about.

Unfortunately, however, the evidence thus far perhaps suggests that the effect will be to polarise the debate rather than generate a more consensual position on the issues.

Which indeed provides a good parallel for what's at the heart of the debate - incompatible ideologies, religions and cultures can't be set head to head without an element of conflict arising. The ideal of a perfect cultural melting pot is about as likely as the left and right agreeing with each other.

And it should be borne in mind that one of the SNP's current priorities is addressing the ongoing issue of conflict which has its roots in immigration taking place in an earlier century. It's called sectarianism.