George Galloway doesn't get to decide who is more Scottish

This week, former Glasgow MP and political chameleon, George Galloway, decided not only was he so sure of who he was, and where and who he came from, he was also certain of where and who someone else did not come from.

Given that he has very little knowledge of the person involved, that makes him a man of amazing powers, even more amazing than he thinks of himself, which is pretty amazing.

He was referring to Humza Yousaf, the Scottish Justice Secretary, and he told him, via the distance of Twitter, that he, Yousaf, was not a Celt like he, Galloway, was.

George Galloway says he is a Celt, fair enough. Celts migrated to the British Isles thousands of years ago. Since then, other people have migrated to these islands and over the centuries have intermingled and bred together leading to a line of descent that could be traced by a large number of the people who currently live here.

If you claim to be of Celtic ancestry then your history is one of immigration.

One study showed that Celts migrated from the Iberian peninsula, what is now Spain and Portugal.

They didn’t live in isolation, breeding only with other Celts, up to the point that Baby George was born thousands of years later.

I believe I have heard Humza Yousaf describe himself as a Scots Asian or an Asian Scot, as he is Scottish, born in Scotland to parents who are Asian.

So, chances are he is not of Celtic origin but in modern day relevance what has that got to do with being Scottish?

George Galloway appears to be trying to promote some Celtic ethnic purity that makes someone more Scottish than another.

It is a dangerous and stupid agenda to promote.

And it is one that we cannot allow to take hold.

Humza Yousaf, and any other Scot who has parents who came to Scotland from another part of the world, can be 100% Scottish and still identify with another country or culture in his lineage.

It just means he has living knowledge of his ancestry and the journey of other people whose movements brought them to Scotland.

Many people in the west of Scotland have different parts to their ethnic identity.

We can all, if we know our family history or had one of those DNA ancestry tests, alight on one particular identity among many that our ancestry throws up.

In doing so we ignore other parts that exist in our family history that we could also identify with.

Recently, my brother asked if I would be interested in researching our family tree.

We are both in our 50s, and our memory and knowledge only go as far back as our grandparents, who, as far as we know, were all born in Scotland.

After that, we have no idea. I suspect it is not too far further back on at least one side, if not both, before Irish immigration comes into play, as it does with many people of my generation in this city.

It doesn’t give me the right to claim to be more Scottish than anyone else.

Again, that would be stupid and dangerous.

As we move into the future, other identities come into play and our children and grandchildren will have other possible identities from their family trees.

We are all, at some point, descended from immigrants. Glasgow more than most Scottish cities is a city of migrants both from within Scotland and from outside.

Wave after wave, from Ireland in the 19th century, Poles and Lithuanians and Italians in the 20th century, then Asians from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to another wave of eastern Europeans and the most recent influx of asylum seekers from the middle East and Africa and other places where their safety was at risk.

There is a new generation of children growing up whose parents came here as refugees.

We reported this week on 13-year-old Giorgi Kakava, who came here before he could remember Georgia and is growing up Scottish in Springburn.

If he is allowed to stay, and chooses to stay as an adult and has children, they will be Scottish. What else could they be?

In among all that, people are still moving here from Ireland, from England, from America and all over the world while people from Scotland also move away.

One of my favourite quotes is from former US president Barack Obama, whose father is Kenyan and his mother American. He too had his American identity questioned, most famously by the man who replaced him as president, who was ironically also the son of an immigrant.

Obama told his fellow Americans: “Who is going to decide who the real America is? Who is to determine, that in this nation of immigrants, in a nation that unless you are a Native American, you came here from someplace else, that you have a greater claim than anybody here?”

He ended that with: “We can’t let that brand of politics win.”

I think that is a good way to end this too.