Journey from No to Yes

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I arrived in in Scotland in 1981 to run an educational charity. My work involved providing residential Personal Development courses for some of the vast number of young unemployed who were casualties of the Thatcher Government’s slash and burn policies. I was always pro-Europe and Scotland in the early 1980s was a net beneficiary of EEC (as it then was) financial aid due to its depressed economic status. Our courses were part funded by EEC grants to Strathclyde Regional Council. An early memory is of dealing with an SRC manager who complained about the bureaucracy of ‘Brussels’ where he said there were over 100,000 staff employed as administrators. I commented that this seemed pretty good value given that the EEC at the time had a population of over 250 million and compared very favourably with SRC which also has a staff of over 100,000 to cater for the needs of just 2.5 million people.

I’d always been a Labour voter and saw many parallels between my home area of the North East of England and Central Scotland, both of which were heavily dependent on coal, steel and ship-building and saw little reason to change my political affiliation. That all changed in 2003 when, along with thousands of others I marched in Glasgow to demonstrate against the impending invasion of Iraq. I gave my vote to the Liberal Democrats because they supported Proportional Representation and Federalism, which I’d always viewed as the best solution to the disparate needs of the UK. Even at that time I recognised that the Palace of Westminster was a de-facto English Parliament, given that 85% of MPs represent English constituencies (the recent introduction of English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) is a travesty of justice in my view and indicative of the arrogance and sense of entitlement of English MPs. Pre EVEL, even with the support of all MPs from devolved parts of the UK, for a Bill to pass would still require the support of 41% of English based MPs).

I was greatly encouraged by the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and was therefore hugely disappointed by the result of the 2004 devolution referendum for a Regional Assembly in the North East of England which I saw as a chance to spread Federalism across the UK. The vote went 4:1 against, the main arguments against the Assembly were that it would increase bureaucracy and partisan loyalties about where the new assembly would be sited (Newcastle or Durham). My disillusionment was completed by the botched Alternative Vote referendum of 2011 brought by the Lib. Dems during their time in coalition Government. Still I resisted the idea of Scottish independence as I’d always associated Nationalism as anti-English xenophobia, views which were shaped by groups such as Settler Watch in Aberdeenshire and the burning of second homes by Welsh Nationalists in the 1990s.

The scales finally fell from my eyes in 2013 when I retired to a more rural area and, without access to my daily newspaper fix, started to read the news on-line. The revelation was in the comments that accompanied the newspaper articles which I quickly came to value most. One day a blogger mentioned ‘The Wee Blue Book‘ which I Googled, discovered Wings and the rest is history.

The young unemployed people I worked with generally had far more potential than they gave themselves credit for. A combination of lack of support, lack of encouragement and lack of opportunity had imbued in them low self- confidence that expressed itself in a ‘can’t do’ attitude. Rather than embrace challenges they actively avoided them. My work involved giving them more responsibility, providing support and above all, trusting them. In many ways I see my work with these young people as a metaphor for Scotland’s condition. So full of latent talent and with natural and physical resources to die for! All we need is a spark to ignite that potent mixture and I’m confident we can thrive. The ignition will come through independence and trusting the ability of the people of Scotland to embrace the opportunities that independence will afford.

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3 thoughts on “Journey from No to Yes”

  1. Thanks Philip. Inspiring read and gives renewed vigour to those of us who have been round the block a few times.

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