A letter to my friends and to those who voted ‘Yes’

Dear ‘Yes’ voters,

I see a lot of very heartbroken messages on social media as people wake up to the news that Scotland have voted ‘No’. I have read a lot of people talking of how our opportunity has now gone, how they are done with Scotland, threats of moving away from Scotland and just general disillusion. So here is a wee message to you all.

Margaret Thatcher leaving 10 Downing Street

When I was a bairn one of my first memories that I can still see in my head as clear as yesterday, was Margaret Thatcher leaving 10 Downing Street. This wasn’t my first exposure to politics, but it’s an event that remains with me. I must have been about 5 or 6. I remember candidates that were being put forward to take over from Thatcher too. The UK was still very much Conservative! I remember the Poll Tax. It obviously wasn’t something I ever had to pay, but I do recall the resentment. It wasn’t until I was in high school that Labour had that massive landslide victory!!!

My first protests I went to happened during the Tory years. It was a protest against cuts to education. I remember someone had made a massive puppet of Michael Forsyth with a scythe and the slogan ‘Michael Forscythe’! I think if I could go back I’d also have pointed out that ‘Forsyth’ could be changed to ‘Forsith’ and get some Star Wars reference in there, just because I love Star Wars and, well, it’s kinda funny!

Did things REALLY get better?

I remember staying up the night of the Labour landslide victory in 1997. Even then, I never thought I would see any real power in Scotland! When Norway is almost as far away as Westminster you do wonder sometimes why Scotland’s future is in the hands of politicians so far removed from the people themselves. It wasn’t long after that Scotland was given the new powers of a devolved parliament (though it did take a while to get that ugly building at Holyrood built and it cost a bloody fortune. Same old Edinburgh!).

When the UK looked like it was heading towards war with Afghanistan, I was on the streets protesting against it. It attracted a fair number of people in Scotland who were not happy about going to war. However, it was the protests against going to war with Iraq that remains with me. “The biggest anti-war movement in the UK since Vietnam” they said and we never went to war in Vietnam. This time it was different.

I went to anti-war protests in Glasgow AND Edinburgh. The number of people on the street was mindblowing! I made some awesome banners against the war which I stuck in my window after I came back from the protests. The energy was amazing! I walked alongside Tommy Sheridan at one point and felt like this anti-war movement wasn’t just kids that knew no better, but we were walking with people from all different backgrounds. I even bumped into an old school teacher I had! Schools were out in force, especially my old high school. The young people of 16 and 17 years old joining in this HUGE movement of people.

The UK went to war. The people I had walked beside on the streets were ignored.

“Not in my name” – leaflets handed out during the anti-war protests

I remember being bitterly disappointed. In fact, I remember being very angry at the government for not listening to the people. I saw a huge movement of people slowly come to terms with the fact that their voices that had been raised so loudly, not only in Scotland, but across the UK, suddenly realise that Westminster weren’t listening. I saw the first bombs being dropped in Iraq. I watched it on TV and I wept. We knew it would happen that night. Next day I was back out on the streets protesting. And I kept protesting until the protests stopped and the people went silent.

The people had been right. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The UK had gone into an illegal war. The ‘I told you so’ attitudes still resonate as an even scarier looking force in the form of ISIS or IS or ISL or whatever the hell you want to call them start to eye up the vacuum left in the Middle East. The West now terrified of making another mistake! Saddam was a monster, there’s no denying that. But that is a different argument for a different day.

Why am I discussing the Iraq War? The protests. The masses of people who got up and made their voices heard. The banners, the slogans are all a memory. When the elections came around Labour were punished in the ballot boxes both in the General Election and the Scottish Election. The momentum of dissatisfaction continued and still resonates as we have a coalition government sat in Westminster. It still resonates around Westminster as they ponder whether to join in on wars in Syria or against ISIS.

The miners strikes, the Poll Tax, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war… There are movements of people who stand up against the way government is run and not all of them are listened to. I find it interesting how many things from Thatcher’s era are slowly seeping out now like the cover up at Hillsborough. Again this is another discussion for another day.

After all my rambling, I’ll get to the point. 1,617,989 people who voted yesterday (that’s 45% of the total number of people who voted) voted ‘Yes’! That is a HUGE deal! It’s not half, but it’s a lot better than what many expected 18 months ago. The reaction of the leaders of the three big UK parties in the last week shows that they were scared of losing this. And this with only one newspaper backing the ‘Yes’ campaign. The sheer number of people engaged in politics has been AMAZING! I’ve never seen a debate quite like it! In an era where people are apparently disillusioned with politics, the percentage of people even turning up (over 80%!) was astonishing!

Ok, so the vote was ‘No’, but the people that I’ve seen saying they were going to vote ‘Yes’ have been represented on the whole by young people. And I don’t mean just the 16 and 17 year olds that were allowed to vote, I mean university and college students, people in their 20s! Rather than falling into despair I really think that we should look at this in a positive light. This was the people speaking, not the media. If young people can continue their enthusiasm for politics, then Scotland as a society have won! We have a General Election coming up next year, make sure you are registered and make your vote count! Don’t become apathetic, don’t give up hope. This is the beginning and we can move forward from this.

There were arguments that people found that the ‘Yes’ side weren’t answering properly. Lets now take time to look at these questions again and look for ways that they could be addressed if we were able to take this opportunity again in 5, 10 or 15 years time. Play the long game rather than becoming ‘woe is me’. We got this far, lets keep the momentum going!

Last night’s achievement was incredible. We must accept defeat graciously, but celebrate our achievements. Stay passionate, stay political, keep raising your voices, keep pushing for a better Scotland. We may not be independent, but we are still a great nation and we can still move things forward in a positive manner!

“Scottish Independence: Irish example shows independence works well”

Scottish Independence: Irish example shows independence works well
Bernard J Mulholland
16 September 2014

Westminster has had decades to deliver on these promises, but has steadfastly refused to do so.

They’ve also had plenty of time push their ‘Better Together’ campaign which seemed to be all over the place rather than showing unity. Funny considering it’s a union they’re wanting!

David Cameron pleads with Scots not to “break up this family of nations”. But the Irish Republic left the UK decades ago and yet it is still a member of the union and our family of nations, i.e. the European Union. Once Great Britain (Scotland, Wales and England) joined the EU, then the UK became superfluous.

Furthermore, the Republic has no vast oil reserves and yet its economic growth equals or exceeds that of the UK, and this is despite the Republic being within the eurozone.

The EU is a very interesting topic when it comes to this campaign. Polls have shown that the majority of Scots want to remain part of the EU while at the same time UKIP are gaining support in England and the Tories are looking at the options regarding the EU and whether the UK stays or goes. If Scotland stays and a referendum on the EU presented itself, the whole of Scotland could vote to stay in the EU and still find itself outside of it. It may not matter if the vote goes ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, Scotland could be removed from the EU either way.

The second point on the Republic I think has already been highlighted in earlier posts on this blog.

If the Irish can manage their economy as well as, if not better than, Westminster, then what impediment would stop the Scots from doing the same?

“Scotland, beware – political will doesn’t always find a way”

Scotland, beware – political will doesn’t always find a way
Tom Clark
Wednesday 17 September 2014

But when promises are made in desperation, it is as well to ask both whether they are credible and whether they cohere. And on both counts, Scots who harbour mistrust of Westminster can find ample reason to doubt.

This is one of the key issues that worries me!

Please read all of Tom Clark’s article in full! Link above.

Even where the pledges are explicit – on the permanence of the Scottish parliament and the granting of new powers to it – the lack of detail means more questions are raised than answered. It is already pretty well inconceivable that the Scottish parliament would be abolished by the UK because the politics would then drive Scotland to secede, but the traditional doctrine of Westminster’s sovereignty precludes any parliament binding its successor against having the option to scrap Holyrood. Very rare bits of legislation – the European Communities Act 1972, and to some extent the Human Rights Act – enjoy special clout in the courts, but none is above repeal. It is hard to see how the 1998 Scotland Act, which established Holyrood, could be more deeply entrenched, other than by a broader recasting of the whole UK’s constitution. If Westminster wants Scots to believe that Holyrood can never be touched, it really needs to explain how.

The ‘No’ campaign have gone on about how voting ‘Yes’ are lacking details, but what the ‘No’ camp are suggesting isn’t set in stone either.

And that, of course, introduces all manner of other uncertainties: will all of the three party leaders will still be there? Will there need to be coalition negotiations? What priority will Scotland be afforded in such discussions, and by the new leaders? Alex Salmond’s kneejerk reaction to the leaders’ pledge was to point out the one of the signatories, Clegg, has a record of infamous pledges, citing student fees. A more poignant parallel is Cameron’s pledge in the coalition agreement to democratise the House of Lords, an undertaking about another constitutional matter, solemnly given not before but after the election yet one he breezily discarded when his party refused to wear it. Could the same thing happen again?

As a graduate, the student fees fiasco along with going into a coalition with the Tories has given me reasons to distrust Clegg and the Lib Dems. Reform of the House of Lords being discarded is also worrying as a parallel.

In the case of a Conservative-led administration, it was necessary only to listen to the reaction of Tory backbenchers on Tuesday to see the dangers. Christopher Chope, MP for Christchurch, was on the BBC at lunchtime asking sharp questions and insisting that he would not vote for more devolution for Scotland, unless this were part of a broader package that contained something for England too. John Redwood, meanwhile, speaks of the need for the Commons to double-up as a part-time English parliament. There is much less agreement about any of this than there is about the Scottish side, so if English reforms have to be settled before the deal on Scotland can be finalised, that could postpone everything.

More and more uncertainty that makes me more and more nervous about a vote for ‘No’!!!

With all of this in mind, the apparent leap in the dark voting ‘Yes’ seems to be mirrored by a similar leap in the dark voting ‘No’. If the uncertainty is what has convinced people to vote ‘No’ then maybe they need to reexamine all of what has been put forward from the ‘No’ campaign as well as the ‘Yes’.

The Economy and Scaremongering Part 2

This is an interview on the BBC with Danny Cox, Head of Financial Planning at Hargreaves Lansdown, ‘one of the UK’s leading independent financial service providers and asset management specialists‘.

This quote is taken from their website:

In the short term investors should not be unduly concerned about the impact of independence on their investments, savings and pensions products. In the event of a ‘yes’ vote there would be a period of some months before policy matters such as tax and currency could start to be resolved and for the time being there would be no significant changes affecting investors.

Find out more about what Hargreaves Lansdown are saying on the Scottish Referendum here:

https://www.hl.co.uk/news/articles/the-scottish-referendum-investor-faqs

“How the media shafted the people of Scotland”

How the media shafted the people of Scotland
George Monbiot
Tuesday 16 September 2014

Perhaps the most arresting fact about the Scottish referendum is this: that there is no newspaper – local, regional or national, English or Scottish – that supports independence except the Sunday Herald. The Scots who will vote yes have been almost without representation in the media.

There is nothing unusual about this. Change in any direction, except further over the brink of market fundamentalism and planetary destruction, requires the defiance of almost the entire battery of salaried opinion. What distinguishes the independence campaign is that it has continued to prosper despite this assault.

I think this point is very interesting. The Yes campaign hasn’t needed media backing to gain 50% of the potential votes as the polls of the last week has shown.

Please read George Monbiot’s article in full, it is linked above!

In June the BBC’s economics editor, Robert Peston, complained that BBC news “is completely obsessed by the agenda set by newspapers … If we think the Mail and Telegraph will lead with this, we should. It’s part of the culture.” This might help to explain why the BBC has attracted so many complaints of bias in favour of the no campaign.

I have seen many complaints on social media about the bias of the BBC in their coverage of the Independence Referendum. George Monbiot’s point here certainly makes a lot of sense!

Living within their tiny circle of light, most senior journalists seem unable to comprehend a desire for change. If they notice it at all, they perceive it as a mortal threat, comparable perhaps to Hitler. They know as little of the lives of the 64 million inhabiting the outer darkness as they do of the Andaman islanders. Yet, lecturing the poor from under the wisteria, they claim to speak for the nation.

I don’t think it’s just senior journalists that are unable to comprehend the desire for change. I’ve seen many people attacked on social media for backing ‘Yes’. I do think independence is seen as a threat and there is a fear of change.

Despite the rise of social media, the established media continues to define the scope of representative politics in Britain, to shape political demands and to punish and erase those who resist. It is one chamber of the corrupt heart of Britain, pumping fear, misinformation and hatred around the body politic.

That so many Scots, lambasted from all quarters as fools, frauds and ingrates, have refused to be bullied is itself a political triumph. If they vote for independence, they will do so in defiance not only of the Westminster consensus but also of its enforcers: the detached, complacent people who claim to speak on their behalf.

The number of Tweets I’ve seen and the number of posts on the referendum I’ve seen on Facebook has been astonishing on both sides of the debate. I think it’s fantastic that people are so engaged in discussing this topic. I’ve been very passionate about politics for years and it’s nice to finally see other people discussing the future of our country and the government. I have began to move away from the BBC as a source of news and have become far more dependent on news from The Guardian, The Independent and have began to look at news from around the world to see what is being reported away from the bias of the UK media.

“Waiting for the Wheel to Turn”

Here come the Clearances my friend
Silently our history is coming to life again
We feel the breeze from the storm to come
And up and down the coast
We’re waiting for the wheel to turn

We cannot live in the past, but we must remember our history. We also must remember that there were Scots involved in moving people from the lands during the Clearances, Scots who fought Scots during the Jacobite Rebellions. This is not an anti-English movement! An independent Scotland would create powers for the Scottish people to govern themselves, but we must remember that England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales are our neighbours who all have long historical relations with us. There are a lot of positives to be taken from the past as well as negatives.

We may be waiting for the wheel to turn, but we must extend a hand of friendship to our close neighbours if we become an independent nation.

“Scotland must brave independence”

Scotland must brave independence
Peter MacLeod
September 12, 2014

Imagine a world in which Australia wasn’t an independent country. Your daily news comes from England, but the London news desk graciously gives you 20 minutes at the end of the bulletin to update you on Australian news. All Australian place names are explained by the presenters in order to disguise British ignorance.

Tax revenue from Australian companies is sent to London and then your government is given some money back to spend on local initiatives. While Britain doesn’t have any natural resources, its media – which dominates Australia – tells you that you are “subsidy junkies” for receiving higher spending levels. Any attempt on your part to argue that your country should be independent leads to Crocodile Dundee references, suggestions that you hate British people and a reply that despite Australia’s resources, educated workforce and strong exports, your country could never survive on its own.

It is perhaps easier to look at other countries who have claimed their independence within the Commonwealth who are hundreds of miles from Westminster. The close proximity of Scotland to Westminster perhaps clouds some visions, but if it was Australia or India or Canada would independence from the Westminster government seem so far fetched?

Please read all of Peter MacLeod’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald linked above!

Yet, despite Scotland’s strengths, there is a fear campaign being waged by the British government, the media and, of course, other Scottish politicians who don’t want to cut the apron strings from the Mother Country. The onslaught of scare campaigns would make Dick Cheney blush. Unfortunately the lack of belief that Scotland could prosper does not just exist in the big newsrooms in London. Of the 37 newspapers in Scotland, only one supports independence. This is despite the fact that recent polls put both the “Yes” and “No” sides neck and neck. This is a direct result of a culture Scotland has only started to grow out of recently.

It is surprising that despite the media appearing to back the ‘No’ campaign the polls are so close! This referendum wasn’t meant to be 50/50 which is why only one paper has backed independence, it is why the party leaders in Westminster had a sudden panic last week and rushed to Scotland despite them knowing about the independence referendum for years!

Hesitant voters in Scotland only need to look to Australia to witness how at ease with itself a country becomes when it takes control of its own affairs. We don’t need to swallow the lie any longer that we are a poor country. And we don’t need an out of touch elite in London deciding how much of our own money we should have to spend. We just need a bit of Australian confidence.

Scotland needs to look around the world at all the different countries that were once part of the Empire and at how they have stayed within the Commonwealth yet have their own independence and control their own affairs. Scotland doesn’t have to follow Ireland’s lead in leaving the Commonwealth when countries like Australia have become an independent nation that still belong to the Commonwealth.

“Now there are no shipyards here at all”

Steelmen, miners, shipwrights, and sailors
Steelmen, miners, shipwrights and sailors
We’ll never see their likes again
No more workers
It’s gone the way of all good things

Tall masts would sail from the shipyards
“Pride of the Clyde” they’d say
Now all the ships have gone away

Another song from the generation before my own but the impact of Thatcher’s government can still be seen in many Scottish towns and cities to this day. In fact, the shipyards of Scotland have still been making news this year as more shipyards close.

Scotland’s last commercial shipyard Ferguson Shipbuilders set to close
Angela Monaghan
The Guardian, Friday 15 August 2014

Scotland’s remaining shipbuilding industry was dealt a severe blow on Friday when the country’s last commercial shipyard went into administration with the loss of about 70 jobs on the river Clyde.

After more than a century in business, staff at Ferguson Shipbuilders arrived for work at Port Glasgow, Inverclyde, in the morning to be told most of the 77-strong workforce were being made redundant with immediate effect.

A handful of workers were retained to finish existing work and maintain the yard.

The Economy and Scaremongering

This interview with Irish economist David McWilliams on Irish channel RTÉ is very interesting. It is an outsider perspective of the economy rather than from within the UK or Scotland. This could be seen therefore has having less bias being said by an economist looking in.

“How history turned against Tory-voting Scotland”

How history turned against Tory-voting Scotland
Tom Devine
Sunday 14 September 2014

All this presents a major intellectual challenge for the historian. Little more than a generation ago, in the 1950s and early 60s, the union could not have been more secure. The Scottish Unionist party (only becoming the Conservative party in Scotland in 1965) had won a famous and overwhelming victory in the general election of 1955. The SNP at the time was but an irrelevant and eccentric sect rather than a mainstream political party. Indeed, despite the mythology of Red Clydeside, Scotland had voted mainly for the Tories in the 1920s and 1930s. The Labour landslide victory of 1945 can be seen as an aberration in that context.

We’re always told to stop harking back to the past and that romantic idea of William Wallace crying ‘FREEEEEDOM’ with Mel Gibson’s voice. History is important though and not just the distant past.

For Scotland to turn from a pro-Unionist country to a country with an almost 50/50 split on independence 60 years later, there must have been something to cause this dramatic shift in opinion.

Please read all of Tom Devine’s article linked above, as he goes into far more detail to what I will be in my blog!

The experience of Scotland in the 1980s is a critical factor in this narrative. Between 1976 and 1987 the nation lost nearly a third of its manufacturing capacity. The great heavy industries that had made Scotland’s global economic reputation over more than a century disappeared in a matter of a few years. A post-industrial economy did emerge in the 1990s, but the crisis left behind a legacy of social dislocation in many working class communities and created a political agenda north of the border in marked contrast to that of the south of England. Rightly or wrongly, the devastation was blamed on the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher. Scotland soon became a Tory-free zone in electoral terms. Another bastion of the union passed into history.

For my generation growing up in the aftermath of the Thatcher years, I would never DREAM of voting Conservative as a Scottish person. Heck, that quote doesn’t even mention the Poll Tax which was introduced to Scotland before anywhere else in the UK! ‘Tory’ has almost been like a swear word growing up in Scotland. The shame of having a family member vote for them is unbearable for many people.

There may well be a no vote on Thursday. But a victory for unionism will be far from decisive or definitive. Nearly half the Scottish electorate will almost certainly vote yes and may not be easily satisfied by post-referendum devo max concessions that are also likely to further fuel resentments south of the border. If the yes campaign wins, Britain will never be the same. Three centuries and more of political union between England and Scotland will be consigned to history. It’s the possible end of an old political union rightly thought by many Scots to be no longer fit for purpose.

It probably doesn’t help that devo max was taken off the table or that it has only been in the last week that the three big UK party leaders left Westminster in a panic coming to Scotland to beg the Scottish people to stay. Last week there were already postal votes being sent in! For me, seeing Cameron, Clegg and Miliband leaving it so late to take this independence referendum seriously cemented my voting decision.