Jaundiced eye of the Watchers

against English 'settlers'.

NOT since Hugh MacDiarmid wrote to Langholm town council to inform it

that he did not want the freedom of the town has an issue related to

persons anti-English merited more column inches in the local press than

the emergence of the fringe organisation Scottish Watch from

Dumfriesshire.

The group, which has pledged to conduct a campaign of civil

disobedience to win Scots the right to a home in Scotland in preference

to ''white settlers'', has also had its fair share of national

publicity.

The story is expected to run and run as the Saltire Society prepares

to oust Scottish Watch leaders from its membership on November 16, and

the Scottish National Party gets ready to proscribe the group as

''racists'' next month.

Moreover, a Liberal Democrat conference was told at the weekend that a

student from south of the Border had decided to give up her studies

after her boyfriend was beaten up in an Annan pub because of his English

accent.

Ironically, Scottish Watch had intended to remain behind the woodwork

until the New Year, but naively they invited a speaker from the more

extreme Settler Watch to address their first national conference in

Perth a few weeks ago. And the press pounced. There followed a story on

BBC's Reporting Scotland, during which Iain Sutherland, the spokesman

for Scottish Watch, again naively, compared his mission to that of

Mahatma Gandhi.

Scottish Watch was formed in April by disaffected Scottish

nationalists. Mr Sutherland, a lecturer in communication studies at

Dumfries, Mr Bob Dunlop, a TV repair man from Auldgirth, near Dumfries,

and another person as yet unnamed, established the group after failing

to have the ''white settler'' issue taken on board, even in a diluted

form, by the SNP, many of whose members, they allege, have been moaning

for years about the number of English in Scotland.

The trio travelled several times to Wales to get inspiration from the

Welsh Language Society, although they condemn the burning of holiday

homes in Wales by extremists.

Scottish Watch claims 138 members -- doctors, writers and university

lecturers among them -- although the SNP has claimed that the statement

is a confidence trick. The number, they suggest, includes people who

wrote to Scottish Watch for information.

Scottish Watch say they have divided Scotland into six areas in each

of which local ''agents'' or ''informants'' are gathering intelligence

on English immigrants.

Mr Sutherland, who was a member of the Scottish National Party from

1967 until last summer and is currently chairman of the Dumfries and

Galloway branch of the Saltire Society, says one in five of the

population of Dumfries and Galloway is English, and he says the influx

of English settlers into Scotland has caused homelessness and widespread

unemployment.

He says 52% of the population of Arran and 55% of the island of Sanday

in Orkney are English incomers.

''We have been accused of racism and fascism but we subscribe to

neither,'' declares Mr Sutherland, co-author of Britain's Secret War, a

history of ''tartan terrorism''.

''We cannot be fascists because we have a democratic constitution and

we are not racists because Scots and English are not of a different

race.

''We in Scottish Watch follow the example of the Welsh Language

Society in advocating some form of housing Bill whereby a housing agency

would buy property in the open market and rent it out or sell it to

Scots, or English who integrate and have lived here for 15 to 20 years.

''What we are doing is thought respectable in Wales, where there have

been sociological studies of white settlers and their effect on national

culture.

''If some academics would come in and study the problem in Scotland

that would be fine, but everybody has ignored it. It is an issue which

political parties will never touch because they are afraid of it.''

Mr Dunlop, who is as forthright as Mr Sutherland is soft-spoken, says:

''In the past five years we have had thousands of people coming in from

England, buying up the houses, forcing our people out.

''They have taken all our best jobs and colonised the area, eroding

our culture and taking over community councils and quangos and councils.

They were responsible for getting Ian Lang re-elected as Scottish

Secretary.''

Answering the deluge of letters to the local press condemning the

group, Mr Dunlop, who is treasurer of the local Saltire Society branch,

adds: ''We are against the English because it is they who are doing it.

Obviously if it was the Albanians or the Apaches we would be against

them too.''

People of all political hues have recorded their vigorous condemnation

of Scottish Watch, and that includes the secretary of the Campaign for a

Scottish Assembly.

Mr John Aitkenhead, the founder of the Summerhill-based Kilquhanity

school in Galloway and a close friend of the late Hugh MacDiarmid, is

president of the Dumfries and Galloway branch of the Saltire Society,

and a veteran SNP member.

He admitted that MacDiarmid was ''anti-English'' and might have

considered such a pressure group to be of some value. But he emphasised

his own opposition to Scottish Watch: ''It is very sad to hear of the

activities of Iain Sutherland and his short-sighted aims and blinkered

vision. He has been so supportive of Scottish heritage and has helped me

greatly in the formation of the branch.

''There is no room for this kind of thing in the Saltire Society. It

is a non-political organisation and several members are moving for the

expulsion of Iain Sutherland.''

Sir Hector Monro, MP for Dumfries, and a Scottish Office Minister,

described the founders of Scottish Watch as ''eccentric gentlemen crying

in the wilderness''.

He added: ''I don't think they will get very far. They will not get

much support. Common sense will prevail. We give the English incomers a

welcome, just as many Scots in England get a warm welcome.''