Professor John Robertson OBA

Thanks to Bob Lamont for alerting us to this.

The Ferret is in the National today with the above and:

At least 20 incidents linked to anti-migrant protests, racism and the far right in the last two months have exposed rising political tensions across Scotland.

They included attacks on mosques and asylum hotels, alleged assaults – and the jailing of a neo-Nazi for slashing a student in the face with a knife. The Ferret found there were at least 17 arrests linked to anti-migrant protests, and police are investigating a number of alleged hate crimes.

Anti-racism campaigners said the rise of the far right and anti-migrant protests at hotels are “causing widespread fear and alarm”, while “misinformation and toxic dialogue” are making people less safe.

Here are the statistics and the trend for racially aggravated offenses (a proxy for anti-immigrant crimes) from official Scottish Government data.

I appreciate that the above graph represents the trend up to the end of 2024/2025, but the Ferret’s claims of at least 20 incidents in the last two months, when in 2024/2025, there were 3 357 charges relating to race crime, or around 300 per month seems pretty low. Is the Ferret arguing a fall in such crime in recent months.

Such crime is down about 30% on 2010/2011 and was even down further on last year, by 2.2%.

Also, for accuracy, as all factcheckers profess to love, the above neo-Nazi slashing was at a Gaza protest which has nothing to do with immigration and the victim was white: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/life-edinburgh-great-terrifying-knife-104629059.html

As for the rise of the far-right in Scotland?

The Ferret tried the same thing in August 2024 with the same shoddy level of research:

The Ferret ‘fact-checker’ is punting another scare story to try to convince Scots that right-wing terror groups are active here and might trigger the same kind of riots seen in England and Northern Ireland.

Reading through their report, I see evidence of around 20 individuals, a few knives and no guns.

None of these individuals or wee groups has ever actually done anything.

Police Scotland estimate at least 55 County Lines drug gangs from English cities operating in Scotland, with typically 4 enforcers each and an array of weapons including guns.

So, English County Lines gangs – 200 plus enforcers, recent assault records, more than 1 000 weapons including at least 50 guns.

Scottish far-right groups – 20 members, no police record, one axe, some knives, a home made bow and arrow and six home-made bows?

Calm down, dear.

Sources:

https://theferret.scot/far-right-groups-riots-scotland-recruit-members/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13041893/Rise-county-lines-gangs-exploiting-vulnerable-Scots.htmlAugust 10, 2024johnrobertson834history, ireland, northern-ireland, scotland, travelEdit

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