‘Tartan Terrorism’ – As real as Scotch Mist or a Clear and Present Danger?

Modern ideas of Scotland include heather-covered glens, whisky, dancing in wood-paneled pubs, castles, and romantic history.

For anyone who remembers (the less than historically accurate) movie Braveheart, Scotland has not always been this way. It is a land steeped in violence, from largely unrecorded uprisings against the Romans (the scale of which is coming more to light through excavations such as Burnswark in Dumfriesshire, and its re-interpretation as the site of a bloody siege and assault) who built not one, but two walls to keep out the populace from their empire; through to the world’s reported first murder using a firearm in my current home town of Linlithgow. Scotland has never shied away from brutality.

Mention ‘Scottish Terrorism’ in contemporary terms, and many point with ridicule to the rather ludicrous campaign of the Scottish National Liberation Army, led by Adam Busby. However, as I point out time and again in Terror for Profit, Scotland is not a land free of terrorism, but instead arguably often in reality a land free for terrorists. From PKK fundraising to eco-terrorist bombs in the picturesque Princes Street Gardens of Edinburgh, terrorism has been present in contemporary Scotland.

Often neglected in contemporary thought is the country’s major role in the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland. Scotland has been the support hub to this conflict for decades, with Loyalist terrorists coming to stay in its Ayrshire region post the Good Friday agreement, while meetings took place between long-standing IRA members and Scottish supporters in my native Cathcart to discuss how to dispose of them.

Scotland’s most infamous connection to the conflict is perhaps the Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee, who almost succeeded in killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was apprehended by Strathclyde Police Special Branch in a Glasgow ‘safe house’ on the route I walked to School.

In Terror for Profit, I outline Scotland’s often neglected, but far from peripheral, role in contemporary terrorism and how it affects those immersed in Scotland’s organized criminality, explaining how this symbiosis governs the nefarious across the land.

I sincerely hope my revelations don’t put you off your shortbread…

Yours Aye,

Martin