Violent Links of No Campaign Increasingly Worrying

The anti-Scotland campaign has always been tinged with a sort of depraved violence. 

Indeed, the last time Labour and their Tory partners agreed on anything substantial, the direct result was the genocidal murder of up to one million Iraqis in an illegal war which sparked a deadly sectarian conflict. 

It's no great secret that the reactionary anti-independence elements in Scottish politics have always known that the only way they could prevent independence was to prevent a referendum on independence. That's why Labour, Ukip, the Tories, the BNP and the Liberals all stood on the same manifesto commitment of "no referendum, not now, not ever" in the 2011 General election. 

The hysteria of the anti-independence campaign has only increased since Scotland elected a pro-independence Parliament two years ago. Ian Davidson, the Unionist MP for Pollok, was so peturbed by the result that he threatened to physically attack the only female pro-independence MP on the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster. Davidson refused to apologise, merely clarifying that he did not mean the threat in a sexual manner. 

Various Unionist apparatchiks, notably the despicable Ian Smart, have used the spectre of violence, including racist violence, to terrorise people into voting against independence. 

Indeed, the vast majority of BetterTogether's money came from an organisation with links to the Yugoslav war criminal "Arkan". 

Indeed, shortly after the elections to the 2nd Parliament, when Labour started a backward slide from which it has never recovered (Labour has lost seats at every Scottish Parliament election since the inaugural one), its partners, the Orange Order, who campaign for Labour in local elections threatened that in the event of a pro-independence Parliament, it would become a terrorist organisation. Speaking about the anti-Catholic organisation's reaction to independence, its General Secretary, Jack Ramsay said

The Orange Lodge would become a paramilitary force, if you like. It obviously implies a recourse to arms ... we'd have a group of people who would be pro union

The Orange Order's threats were never condemned by the Labour Party, which has since struck a secret agreement with the organisation to facilitate sectarian marches, with the result that Glasgow now has more Orange parades each year than any other city in the world.

The low-level threats and insinuations have bubbled under the anti-independence campaign for some time. 

At the launch of the anti-independence campaign's London launch last night (and why would an organisation of "Scottish" political parties fighting a referendum with an exclusively Scottish-based franchise need a London launch?), the unelected Parliamentarian for Life, Thomas Strathclyde, referred to pro-independence supporters as "poison". 

It also emerged that Better Together were to announce the formation of a military wing at this week's Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party conference in Stirling, which is exceptionally worrying. 

Military wings of political movements should be a thing of the past. 

This is not Turkey, where the army sees itself as above the elected government, and removes such governments at will. 

This is not the north of Ireland in the 1980s, a statelet beset by sectarian violence - no matter how much Unionists would dearly love that to be the case.

This is Scotland, in 2013. 

There is no place in this referendum for pejorative language like "poison". There is no place in this referendum for money linked to crimes against humanity. There is no place in this referendum for "military wings".

BetterTogether should apologise for Tom Strathclyde, return Vitol's bloodstained money, and disband their military wing. 

This referendum already risks causing division. We cannot allow BetterTogether's hatred and hysteria to cause lasting and deep divisions in our country.