WE are never more than a few weeks either side of a claim – usually made by a deluded Scottish Labour hack – that Scotland was a bitter and divided country during the independence referendum. It gained currency at a time when Scottish Labour was acting as a footstool for the Scottish Tories and eager to do their bidding by any means possible.

Part of this narrative was the cybernat myth. This held that anyone who propounded a pro-independence view on social media – no matter how benign – was an unpleasant and sexist troll and indicative of an ugly strain running through the Yes movement. Any attempt to raise your voice or otherwise express frustration at any of the propaganda espoused by the overwhelmingly pro-Unionist press and media would be met with howls of manufactured outrage.

At the end of a contest which the Electoral Reform Society praised as having provided a gold standard for democratic engagement it went unremarked by the press that all of those cases of abuse that required police action were perpetrated by supporters of the Better Together side. The British state has a rich history of quelling unrest and seditious talk amongst the masses. Once it simply sent in the army and killed them like the Peterloo Massacre and Bloody Sunday. Then they used agents provocateurs and corrupt magistrates to root out the most articulate and persuasive voices of protest.

In the 21st century the Government doesn’t have to work very hard to quell any signs of answering back. It has an entire flotilla of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers to do its bidding. And it can call upon the services of a hundred commentators to channel the spirit of Agincourt.

The disproportionate influence in UK and Scottish life that private schools are permitted to play extends into the press. In the UK we like to think we have a free press that is uncontaminated by government graft and intimidation that characterises journalism in other countries. Less than seven per cent of people were educated privately in the UK yet more than 50 per cent of the UK’s leading writers and commentators were educated in this wicked system of unfair privilege and unearned privilege. They never stray far from the mother ship and they delivered spectacular results for it during the independence referendum and the EU referendum.

In Scotland there is a tendency among some journalists to belittle and to disparage other social media users who are perhaps less skilled than they at arranging the right words to frame their arguments. Some of these journalists, all of whom are paid handsomely for the privilege of analysing and interpreting current affairs, seemed to take a sadistic glee during the independence referendum in humiliating those social media users whom they deemed to be “zoomers”.

Until very recently newspaper journalists enjoyed an easy ride well beyond the scrutiny of any pesky readers who might have wanted to challenge them. The only forum that existed for this was the letters page, consisting of a handful of polite missives which was often edited by elderly white chaps who were under express instructions to ensure that nothing too controversial or unedifying made it beyond the spike.

Almost overnight us journalists have been pulled screaming out of this gilded existence and made to face the judgment of those who read us. It can be an alarming experience to be told as I was (more than once) “McKenna, you’re a f****** Unionist/nationalist lickspittle” or “McKenna, you’re just a f***** c*** and you make me sick”. But it’s also curiously uplifting to be the source of such passion even when you are being denounced as a rocket and indeed a banger (as we are talking social media here this is where I might insert yon wee emoji with the sad face). My feeling then, as it is now, is that if you’re being paid for the privilege of expressing your trenchant opinions then you can’t very well complain when people fail to be moved by your thoughts and even insist on expressing opposition to your position in industrial language. Sadly some of my colleagues “don’t like it up ‘em” as Corporal Jones might have said. They are happy to demolish political careers and reputations yet are distressed when their own opinions are held summarily to account.

At Brighton this week there has been a sense of shock amongst the media at the sight of an armed bodyguard keeping watch over Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s bright and hugely gifted political editor. Kuenssberg has been vilified in increasingly strident terms by followers of Jeremy Corbyn and some of this has been manifest in vile and often sexually aggressive language. She has been threatened with physical violence and is daily subject to violent threats online. Kuenssberg is not alone here.

In Scotland in recent years there has emerged a group of bright, articulate and feisty young women – mainly (although not exclusively) on the nationalist side of the independence debate. Each of them has been subject to a constant slew of online abuse each time they advance opinions on politics, religion or gender equality. The recipients of the worst abuse (they refuse to be termed “victims”) in almost all cases share a working-class, non-privileged, non-university background.

The publications that they work for cannot afford the expense of a bodyguard with a Special Forces background. But the threats that they each receive often leave them feeling shaken and vulnerable and, in at least one case, having to be extremely choosy about which sort of social gatherings she considers sufficiently safe to attend.

Up until this year most of the abuse has come from the Scottish Conservative Party’s banjo appreciation society. Recently though, this poison has started seeping through from faceless (they are always faceless) individuals on their own side.

They get this because their support for independence isn’t considered to be sufficiently pure or if they have dared to criticise the SNP. In some cases even simply to raise an interesting point in the intense debates around transgender politics is to risk being destroyed on social media by the laptop warriors (most of whom couldn’t fight sleep if a square-go were to be suggested).

The reality of this is that a significant number of men seem to experience a perverse thrill in threatening women and making them experience fear.

This doesn’t mean there is something rotten and more toxic in modern politics. It is something worse than that and which has been with us for eternity. Social media has simply given it a louder voice.

Incredibly, the BBC have been criticised for over-reacting in its decision to provide their valued employee with a bodyguard.

Kuenssberg herself has been the subject of opinions that begin with the words “Of course this is terrible, but …”. To them I would simply paraphrase the words of the author John Grisham expressed by his fictional lawyer Jake Brigance in A Time to Kill: close your eyes and imagine that Laura Kuenssberg is your daughter or your sister.