Katherine Viner, Editor, the Guardian, katharine.viner@guardian.co.uk
Dear Katharine
I’d really like to contribute to the Guardian but cannot because of the 12th September 2014 editorial, telling Scots to vote No in the referendum on independence, a few days later:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/12/guardian-view-scottish-independence
In 1967, aged 16, starting Higher History classes in an industrial Scottish town, our teacher suggested we needed to start reading a serious newspaper, and on the following Sunday, I walked into town, had a look around and bought the Observer. I was stunned by its content. My parents took a tabloid, and I had no idea such rich, fascinating material could be found every day of the week.
Ever since, until that day in 2014, I bought the Observer every Sunday and the Guardian on those weekdays I travelled by train.
In the late 1990’s, following my late father, I started to support the campaign for Scottish independence, satisfied that it had become an acceptably civic form of nationalism. I have stayed with the cause ever since and with increasing dedication.
The Yes movement in Scotland is now profoundly leftist, socially liberal, green, democratic and inclusive. Many born in England now march with us. More than 50% of us now support independence, in repeated polls, even in those skewed against us by suspect sampling.
I still read the Guardian online for its many great stories on matters unconnected with the Yes campaign. I cannot read your ‘Scottish’ correspondents due to their uncritical swallowing of inaccurate Unionist propaganda.
Please, in honour of your long history of criticising imperialist oppression, from Suez in 1956 until your more recent apparent recognition that Irish reunification is legitimate, reconsider your position on Scottish independence and at least do not campaign against it.
Yours sincerely
John
Professor John Robertson (rtd)
Talking-up Scotland 
I’m with you 100% on this. The ‘Grauniad’ (as ‘Private Eye’ used to describe it) has no Scottish viewpoint other than the inherited colonial one. No Grauniad for me until there is a radical shift in their attitude to me and my country.
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I agree with you. This has been my opinion of the Guardian for many years. It is, essentially, an English nationalist newspaper and, more particularly, a newspaper whose horizons are not much further than the ‘Home Counties’.
I put my point about anglocentrism to a Guardian journalist over 20 years ago. He got most shirty about my assertion and angrily said, it could not possibly be true because….. it is the Guardian!!! The unselfaware solipsistic arrogance was risible.
It has had, and still has, some outstanding writers and journalists over the years who have a nuanced understanding of the differing cultures not just in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but, also of the different geographical area of England. The latter was understandable, because for a fair part of my life it was the ‘Manchester Guardian’ and it was edited, published and printed there before moving to London, and omitting the word ‘Manchester’ from the title. One of the reasons for removing the word Manchester from the title was to present itself as a ‘national’ newspaper rather than what subsequent Guardian journalists would snootily and disdainfully call ‘provincial’ newspapers. (A slight parallel can be drawn with The Glasgow Herald becoming The Herald, despite it remaining in Glasgow, but remains a reactionary rag, although it had a purple period during the 1990s after Andrew Neil destroyed the Scotsman, and its journalists fled west)
But, rather than becoming a ‘national’ (= English) newspaper it became a paper of the province of North London.
As a friend of mine says, while recognising these metrocentric biases, ‘it is all we have’. By this, he means that in the current increasingly right wing news media milieu, it is the only UK wide newspaper which provides for leftish, green perspectives.
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I fear it is a waste of time. The Guardian lost my respect when they caved in to the authorities over Wikileaks.
The Observer was sold to Tortoise Media in 2024, led by former BBC head of news James Harding.
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