"A motorway to independence with no U turns and no exits” Tam Dalyell on Devolution

I've been fairly quiet of late on the old blawg. Reason being I'm still sitting back and guffawing at the way that the 'No' vote are building their campaign for the Independence referendum. So far they've been entirely predictable, and to use a crude metaphor, have shot their load far too early. The weeks since the Tartan Overlord rewrote the face of Scottish electoral history, have seen commentators, mostly from the South, wake up to the reality that everything has changed and they are utterly impotent to do anything about it, other than pick up the baton of fear which they'll monger to the maximum for the next three years. Every inaccuracy they've mustered has been spat out, the pro-Independence movement have three years to inform and educate those who would believe the opponents of self determination.

This past weekend we've seen supposed differences of opinion on the fiscal probity of an Independent Scotland and today the frankly dribbling assertion from a nuclear consultant that Scotland faces a forty year period without any puff to drive our wind turbines. No doubt Kite manufacturers will have been leaping off cliffs at this bombshell. I fully expect another crank headline in the Hootsman telling us that our tides have turned and Scotland has now developed the ability to repel all forms of natural energy...


Anyhoo, I attended the 75th Saltire Society celebration up in Glasgow on Saturday (if you're not a member get clicking www.saltiresociety.org.uk) and found a body of mostly elderly (some of whom may have attended the inaugural meeting in 1936) amazing academics, enthusiasts, performers, poets, singers, musicians and digital day gurus, who promote and celebrate this wee bit of land we call home. I left with a further understanding that the struggle for Scotland's right to self determination has been going on for far longer than my own involvement. It's easy to dismiss what's gone before, but the old adage about standing on the shoulders of giants truly rings true. The SNP victory earlier this month was built on the hard work, goodwill and generosity of the likes of those Saltire Society members who see Scotland as something more than a surly peninsula of Northern England.

So by way of a circuitous digression let me take you back in time, to a photograph...in fact two photographs (thank you photoshop) that I took nearly twenty years ago, that encouraged me to become better educated about my countries history and people and reverse that Scottish school education which served up a succession of English Kings and Queens.

December 12th 1992 was a strange day in world history. 

Whitney Houston was still keeping dogs awake with her third week at the top of the poptastic charts with 'I Will Always Love You'. One of those little known natural catastrophes, namely a tsunami, had occurred off the coast of Indonesia, wiping out 3000 lives and 18,000 homes on the Flores Islands in a matter of five minutes. Nobody seemed to understand -- or care.

The tabloids were up to their Monarchist best with some full scale deflection in their coverage of the Royal Wedding between Princess Anne and Commander Tim Lawrence, who chose to get married at Crathie Church near Balmoral. After a year that had seen theRoyal Princes' Charles and Andrew separate from their respective spouses.  This latest Royal Wedding was seen as an attempt at stability and mass hypnosis.

Edinburgh was playing at being all grown up and important as the host to the the European Council and the President of the European Parliament. The delightful European top notch leaders condescended to visit Auld Reekie, to visit the castle, drink whisky, ogle our wummin and debate Denmark's rejection of the Maastricht Treaty and find a way of agreeing to their having certain exceptions before the Danes could have a second Referendum.

The genial host, was none other than the original Grey man. Prime Minister John Major, who said of his trip to North. "May I begin by expressing my thanks to the people of Edinburgh for the very warm welcome we have had and the excellent way in which we have been cared for throughout the last two days." 

Admit it, as you read that quote, mentally you were doing it with that horribly strangulated voice that Spitting Image used to lampoon the man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant.

What John Major, failed to notice, a mere eight months after he'd unexpectedly defeated favourite Neil Kinnock's Labour Party at the 1992 General Election. Was that the natives in Scotland were revolting.

General Election map 1992

Labour in Scotland had garnered 1,142,911 votes, the Scottish Tories 751,950 the SNP came third with 629,564 and the Lib Dems a distant 4th with just 383,856 votes. Which oddly enough returned them 9 MPs. The Tories had 11, Labour 49 and the SNP a grand total of 3. So a total of 72 constituency seats in Scotland saw Labour win 49 of them. The feeble fifty were reduced by one MP when Frank Doran lost Aberdeeen South to youthful Tory  Raymond Robertson. The SNP lost the admirable Dick Douglas, the former Labour MP for Dunfermline West, who had resigned the Labour whip and defected to the SNP in 1990. Dick had stood up to Labour over their simpering approach to combating the introduction of the Poll Tax. At the General Election he took the fight to Donald Dewars Garscadden constituency and took a sizeable 5500 chunk out of Dewars majority.

(C) Scottish Political Archive

 
For many Scots, the final nail in the 'Fighting Fifty's' coffin was the whimpering demise of the Ravenscraig steel works, which at its peak had employed 13,500 workers. It was closed by the British Steel Corporation in 1992 and the remaining 1,200 employees were made redundant. Industrial Scotland was well and truly deid.

Yet 1992 should have been a year of optimism, earlier that Summer, we had witnessed one of the most successful Olympic Games of modern history, with the games taking part in Barcelona, capital of that most autonomous of Spanish 'regions' Catalunya. These games were littered with firsts. The first unified team from Germany since 1964. Post-apartheid South Africa were allowed to participate for the first time since being banished in 1960. The biggest group of new entries came from those previously little known satellite states that managed to break free from the oppression and might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the former Yugoslavia. Across Europe small, newly free nations were celebrating their new found freedom and expression. Scotland's hopes after the election faded like Liz McGolgan's hopes of Gold in the oppressive heat of the Women's 10,000 metres final.  

So, whilst Major was saluting the civic leaders of Edinburgh for putting on a tasty spread, some Scottish punters were dusting down their saltires, downing a fly nip and taking to the streets of Edinburgh for a wee wander to the Meadows for the then newish body going by the all encompassing name of Scotland United.

The aim of this loose gathering of Scots, was simple. Once again Scotland had rejected the notion of Tory rule from Westminster. The Feeble Fifty hadn't managed to save one industry. Scotland had been raped and pillaged of her natural resources, and her workforce cast aside like a Saturday night, back close johnnybag! (no illustration necessary). Led by the late Bill Speirs and sundry cross part leading lights, including a rather foxy Fiona Hyslop, George Galloway (who according to others denounced the British Army in Scotland as an army of occupation), John McAllion, Margo McDonald, Denis Canavan, Jim Sillars and even a svelte young chap by name of Salmond who was sporting Marjorie Proops spare specs....

(C) Scottish Political Archive

A motley crew of between 25,000 and 30,000 ironed their stonewashed 501's, plugged in their walkmans, spruced up their mullets and descended on the streets of Edinburgh to make a lot of noise, so that Mr Major might attune his ears to the local accent...

(C) Scottish Political Archive

 

I remember the day well, because I was there, with my wife pushing our infant son in his buggy. Carrying a massive Saltire we wandered the streets of Edinburgh, chanting, singing, trying to express a unified front that Scotland had firmly rejected the fourth election on the trot of Tory rule from Westminster. Many of the disillusioned Labour supporters that walked alongside us knew they were breaking rank with their Party hierarchy, they knew that Scotland could not continue as a nation with limited representation.

  
Fast forward the best part of two decades, and Scotland again faces the same situation. Do we continue to blunder along tagged on as an afterthought to England, hoping that an incompetent Westminster will turn its attention to our own part of the world and change our lives for the better, or do we trust in the ability of those Scots and those who choose to come her that we can make things better, that we don't need to go down the path of the diaspora heroes who left for pastures new, to find a place to realise their ambitions and hopes?

They hate it when a plan comes apart...

These hard, mother-sucking-clock-fluffers pictured below belong to the U-Team that Alan Cochrane wants to defend the little celebrated 304 year old Act of Union. Over the next few years they will go out of their way to denigrate Scotland and her ambitions to be normal.

Expect pejorative terms like separation, divorce, tearing apart the country and so on. It won't just be them, they'll have a Greek chorus in the shape of the so-called Scottish media, where we have BBC Reporting Labour still smarting over the greatest drubbing in their history. Atholl may have left, but the culture of union hacktivism is still alive and well, not only in the beeb newsroom but upstairs among the Gaelic mafia that govern BBC Scotland, a coterie of a few, who appear to suffer slavish devotion to London, barely capable of taking a decision that affirms positive life in Scotland without running it past LONDON.

Much like the Scottish people chose to dump the dependency parties of a discordant union at the Holyrood election, when given a clear choice with all the facts, they'll arrive at two roads diverging, and take the one less travelled and that will make all the difference.

Apologies to Robert Frost...

Adendum:

Now that Blogger is back up, apologies to BaronSarwar aka @weegietastic of Youtube and Twitter infamy. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I'd seen a Usual Suspects photoshopped job before. Thankfully I was reminded by the fair minded chap himself when he sent me this twitpic.

With my cultured bunnet on for a second, my only defence is the George McKay Brown one, when accused of plagiarising a Sorley McLean poem (or was it vice versa) on the flight of seagulls, he said, he'd obviously subsumed the original poem and reinterpreted it as his own original thought. I sir, am no Sorley or McKay Brown! 

The new political map of Scotland with added urgency...

They don't like it up them.

Our man in London.

What a heady few days we've been through. Personally, I'm still exhausted at observing the endeavours of others, well that and one too many drinks that's lead to the need to replenish my malt whisky collection...

There's simply been too much to take in since Friday. Trying to keep up with Twitter, Facebook and all the anguished fawning and hyperbole in the meanstream media has left me more confuddled than normal. However, one appearance on Newsnicht managed to pull it all together for me in a moment of blinding lucidity. It dawns on me that for all the Tartan Overlords charisma and ability, his positive message for Scotland has been reinforced by one man. One man who has done more for the SNP than any private donor, friendly columnist, movie star or the combined talents of the much lauded front bench. One man with access to the ears that-be in Westminster, one man with columns in the establishment media, one man who was sent North in 2007 to smack Jack McConnell around and remind him that he was only a regional councillor, with inflated ideas above his own station. That man, who has done so much for the path to Independence, whose actions and comments have led to a majority SNP government is none other than our finest ever double agent. Dear readers I present to you the man who set Scotland on the path to normality.

I suggest a column be erected in Holyrood park to this mans remarkable achievements. His crusade of negativity, of Fear over Hope has led Scotland from the darkness of London dominance to a bright new future. His last cunning ploy to suggest that the London Government could stop the people of Scotland from determining our own fate, was the cherry on the cake. I suggest when he returns home, we have a parade along Princes Street on an open top tram where the adoring masses can laud him with rose petals and confetti made from shredded copies of the Scottish press.

The ultimate reason for voting SNP today...

In an election where Hope must triumph over Fear...

Cheese has voted.

The next Scottish Government?

So, four long hard years of relentless negativity have boiled down the last lap before the polling booths close on Thursday night at 10pm.

At first Labour spat the dummy and refused to acknowledge they'd lost the moral right to run Holywood. Blair headed off for a life of perma-tanned perma-wealth with nary a glance to the land of his birth. Brown, bottled his rage up and took it out on staff and elderly bigots. Jack McConnell suffered for daring to want to fight his own battle, unfortunately for him Blair, Brown and McTernan stomped on his throat to show him who was really the boss. Dougie Alexander slithered around in charge of the election, blithely manipulating the electoral process, all the while proclaiming  a choir boy innocence. 

We've had colonial overseers come and go as Secretaries for the State of Scotland. In four years Salmond has seen off Messrs Alexander, Browne, Murphy, Alexander and latterly has had the woefully innefectual and utterly anonymous Micheal Moore, as the man London keeps in Edinburgh to keep an eye on the rebellious Scots. Similarly he's seen off McConnell and Alexander as his official opposition in Holyrood. Iain Gray, working with a limited team of talent has shown nothing in the way of ambition for Scotland and if there is any moral justice in this world, won't be the man to lead Scotland for the next five years after Thursday.


Labour offered nothing in the way of constructive opposition. Their abstentions and votes against SNP policy all carried out for the sake of spite. I thought as the science appeared to back up their caffeine proposal, they might have taken advantage of the opportunity and compromised a little bit to work with the SNP to combat Scotland's drink problem. Alas no, like a petulant child they voted against all and sundry all the while ticking off the days on their calendars until they were back in the ministerial tower. 


Jim Murphy, spoke of them having learned lessons and coming back into the election a little older and a little wiser. Sadly this hasn't been reflected in the campaign so far. It's been a repeat of 2007 but with added hilarity for the political anoraks, like myself. Funny for a while, but latterly, completely disheartening. Where is the vision, that prompted these people to go into politics?

Obama, before he killed people via games consoles, benefitted from artist Shepard Fairey adopting a photograph of him into the now famous 'HOPE' poster, which spread throughout America in the election year. Eventually posters that cost $45 were selling for tens of thousands of dollars. 

 I was reminded of the poster whilst reading Londoner John McTernan's cynically realistic mantra in the Scotsman that Fear trumps Hope. He contends that the electorate will respond more readily to fear than ambition. My first thought, without deliberately trying to invoke Godwins law, was that McTernan's philosophical stance wasn't too far removed from what went on in 1930's Germany, where fear was the catalyst that lead to global war and genocide.


All of which got me pondering, how best to sum up the people who would run Scotland for the next five years. What do they offer if not hope? The answer's obvious...

 

  

 

Desperate times call for desperate men.

Just when you thought they'd sealed his lid down in the North Queensferry bunker, who should Scottish Labour turn to in their hour of need, none other than the man who saved the world.

The proud owner of the almighty clunking fist, the man who was the bridesmaid for ten long, long, long years who bottled an election at the height of his popularity and was then revealed to be an electoral liability, the man who never was.