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A Scottish overview

A reflection on the state of Scotland and Christianity by the Rev Kathy Galloway, Leader of the Iona Community, delivered at the Scottish Episcopal Church's Provincial Conference in Edinburgh in September 2004. Only a brief extract appears on this page. You can download the whole talk as a pdf (110kb).

A few years ago, at the high school my daughter attended, there were a signifiant number of teenagers who were evacuated from Kosovo to Glasgow during the military intervention there.

These young people integrated remarkably, given the tragic circumstances of their arrival in Scotland; studied hard in a new language and formed real friendships with their Glaswegian fellow students. But then they were sent back, with little apparent regard to the circumstances they would return to.

Not surprisingly, many of these young people were fearful and despairing and saw their new, hard-won hopes for the future dashed.

More surprising, however, was the response of the Glasgow young people. Having befriended the Kosovans, they could not understand why these 16 and 17 year olds were being so summarily deported. In particular, they were disgusted that students who had done so well in their Higher prelims that they had been offered provisional places at Scottish universities, were sent back the week before the exams started, as if to deliberately close a door that still remained a little open.

The hosting of refugees is a two-way relationship, and its brutal severance cuts both ways. In the present political climate, the distress of some Glasgow schoolchildren cuts little ice.

But they are not stupid, these schoolchildren. On the one hand, they are enjoined to be tolerant, welcoming, anti-racist, their textbooks and teachers all tell them so, and they have duly been all of these.

What they see, however, is that politicians are actually dancing to a much more xenophobic tune. They are not practising what they preach. What they see is moral cowardice, a failure of integrity. They perceive that high ideals are not really to be taken seriously after all. Cynicism grows, and the political process loses a little more of its future.

This local story is only one example of the moral and political confusion that exists in Scotland at present with regard to asylum-seekers and refugees, particularly in Glasgow where the majority of them are located.

Tragic incidents of hostility and violence towards asylum-seekers are more than matched by the degree to which people in host communities, often among the poorest areas in Scotland, have actually welcomed, supported and displayed solidarity with them; and this practical welcome has considerably involved Scottish churches of all denominations, and shown them at their best.