My road to Yes, by Fraser Gilmour
by Unknown - 12:57 on 21 April 2014
Via http://yesdivit.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/my-road-to-yes/
Campaigning for Scottish Independence hasn’t been a life-long passion for me. It’s not even been at the top of my agenda for the whole of this half-decade. But a whole array of factors rose up at the same time and now I find myself sitting here writing it all down just so I can make sense of it all.
To start with, I grew up in Orkney. Son of a Helmsdale man and an Aberdonian woman, with Sutherland, Kemnay, Sanquhar, Spain, Ireland, Brazil amongst the family branches, and an older brother born in London. We lived along the road from Jim Wallace and his family, and enjoyed a fairly idyllic life sheltered from the Poll Tax, Coal Mine closures, and the decimation of Scottish Industry in the 1980′s. They were items on the news, but felt more like fiction than reality. The first year of the Poll Tax saw a charge of £1 in Orkney, and an influx of ferryloupers moving up from England. Did we care? There was football to be played and supported, politics was for other people. When I turned 18 I voted LibDem because that’s what we did. Jim seemed like an ok guy, his wife Rosie was great, he once paid me £5 to cut his croquet lawn, he was a lawyer which was what I wanted to be, their kids went to my mum’s school, and above all, it’s what Jo Grimond would have wanted…
I remember watching Gordon Wilson’s speech as he stepped down from the SNP Leadership in 1990 and being impressed by it all. But nothing more. I even found out that my grandmother had been a Branch Convenor in the Conservative Party, and that my Dad had been a Conservative party member when my parents lived in London (although that was more to do with the quality of the snooker table and the cheap bar than any ideology) but still politics didn’t spark an interest.
After school I moved to Aberdeen to study Law. I didn’t join in the debating societies, took no interest in politics on campus. Student grants turned into student loans, but nothing really seemed worth protesting. Cosseted and technically pickled by the student lifestyle, politics was still just for politicians.
1997 saw me voting for Blair’s New Labour. A promise of a new start, optimism and prosperity, an end to the Tory blandness which had followed Thatcher, I was one of those swept along by the charisma of Blair. And he had Noel Gallacher on his side so who was I to argue.
I voted Yes/Yes in 1997. From what I recall, it wasn’t out of political knowledge or a passion for devolution at the time. It was purely and simply the knowledge that, as a Scotsman, I couldn’t in good conscience vote against my country.
I didn’t have any feelings either way on Iraq or Afganistan as they unfolded, and still remember the shock of 9/11. But neither prompted me to get involved.
Then I moved down to Fife. My wife and I had our first child, and whether out of some primordial protective instinct, or just sheer dumb luck, I panicked. 2008 and the credit crunch were sending local firms to the wall, the economy was crashing, and I’d just brought a child into that world. I resolved to educate myself about the things around us so that I could protect them. Government, economics, legal systems, Europe, anything I could get my hands on. Self-education is a very powerful urge, and being alive in the digital age gives you access to anything you want to find out, which is why I still have little patience for those who use it to find amusing pictures of cats.
But I digress. Driving through towns like Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly etc I was struck by the decaying grandeur of them all. Clearly there had been money there. But it had gone and so had the funds to repair and maintain, replaced instead with a crumbling facade no longer hiding the poverty. So I looked into all that too.
My politics were growing, but only at seedling stage when along came the 2010 General Election. I knew by then that I’d never vote Tory, but was choosing between the Libdems and Labour alone. Then one day I was washing the dishes and my back gate opened. In walked Thomas Docherty, right past my window, and he slipped a “sorry you were out” card through my door and slunk back out again. If there is a guaranteed way to lose my vote, that’ll do it every time….
So almost by default, but spurred on by the performances of Nick Clegg on the leaders debates in the run- up to the polls, I switched back to my first ever choice and voted for Willie Rennie and the Libdems as the best of a bad bunch. When the results came in, I assumed a Libdem/Labour coalition was on the cards.
I’ll still never forget the feeling when they linked arms with the Tories and skipped along Downing Street. I had voted LibDem in part to avoid a bunch of right-wing ideologists wreaking havoc upon our welfare state and industries again, and the Libdems had carried them over the threshold.
Gutted was not the word.
Then a friend of mine, knowing my legal background and noticing my burgeoning interest in politics, asked me to read over a website and tell him if it sounded right in terms of EU law etc.
That website was called http://www.realmofscotland.com. For those who don’t know it, it gave a story about devolution which didn’t match the UK State one heralded by New Labour. The link no longer seems to work, but there is mention of it here – http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4367-scottish-devolution-and-the-labour-myth
To cut a long story short, a fire ignited inside me. Within days I had joined the SNP and was furiously researching everything from the Treaty of Union, the UNCHR. trawling the ONS and GERS figures, finding new bloggers and archive material.
My Dad died around then, so I didn’t really get involved in the Holyrood campaign in 2011 on the ground. But I was rampant online through Twitter and Facebook, and as a friend later commented “It’s like you persuaded the entire nation to vote SNP”. I can’t lay claim to any such thing, but definitely opened some eyes and swung some votes to yellow.
I’ll never forget the night of the election results. I was driving overnight from Fife to Gills Bay on a still, moonlit night, and as the declarations came in and the Labour grandees fell, my journey became peppered with stops in lay-bys to shout and cheer.
When the SNP majority was confirmed, and the realisation hit that finally, after 300 years, Scotland would have the chance to vote on the Union, I was up near the Mound on the road north. Standing on the road in the moon-tinged fog, arms outstretched, completely alone for miles around, screaming YESSSSSSS with every ounce of my soul. If you were nearby and heard me, I apologise….
I’m not here for the oil. I’m not here for the EU membership question. I actually don’t give two hoots about what currency we use. We are perfectly capable of being a successful nation without any of the oil. It’s a bonus, which is why the idea of an oil fund makes perfect sense. And has to almost every nation on this planet which discovered oil. Except Westminster, who wasted every penny and more on wars, election promises and unusable weapons of mass destruction. The EU membership issue is a non-problem stirred constantly by Westminster as a distraction. The only people who seriously think the EU would suddenly change from being expansionary to exclusionary, would kick out their biggest oil producer, divest themselves of a huge chunk of their fishing grounds and renewable potential, let alone somehow kick out 5million EU citizens from a net contributing country, when there is no mechanism in EU law to do such a thing, is either an fool or a liar. The fiscal commission weighed up the options and said it was best to start with a currency Union using a Sterling and that’s good enough for me. When it comes to economic or currency advice from Gideon Osborne, Ed Balls, Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown or Danny Alexander, the mere fact I own a graphics calculator means I’m more qualified that they are to comment. Oh, and while we’re on this topic, it is completely impossible for Scotland to be forced to use the Euro, so let’s just lay that one to rest shall we. Look at the entry rules for the Euro and you’ll see exactly why. It’s not rocket science. Any politician who regurgitates the Euro fallacy is clearly lacking in either brainpower or honesty. I’ll let you make up your mind the next time one does this.
I’m here for Yes. A Yes vote is the starting point where the people of Scotland can get together, look at our faults and our problems, look at our blessings, imagine our future, reconcile our pasts. And work together to make our future better. As the late and legendary Bashir Ahmad MSP said, “it isn’t important where you come from, what matters is where we are going together as a nation”. That’s where I come from on this, and it’s where I want us all to go. Those who stand and bicker about flags and currencies and whether they will be better off personally are missing the bigger picture. The real issues of independence.
Who will make a better job of creating a good future for our children, grandchildren and all future generations of Scots: Westminster or ourselves? Who will use the resources or Scotland, our wind and wave power, our hydro, our coal, gas and oil, our food, our water, and above all our people, to make the future brighter for Scotland: Westminster or ourselves? Who will make the right decisions to promote Scotland in an increasingly globalised and smaller world: Westminster or ourselves? Who will make the right decisions on a diplomatic level to ensure peace and good neighbourly relations for Scotland, so our children don’t end up dying in foreign wars: Westminster or ourselves? And who will make the right economic and political choices to avoid the crushing poverty and rising levels of social injustice Scottish children can now endure just by the postcode lottery of birth: Westminster or ourselves?
Just because I’m SNP doesn’t mean I’m any of the things the UK Media likes to say I am. I’m not racist or anti-English. In fact I abhor both. I’m not a fascist, I’m a ginger. I’ve not been brainwashed by Alex Salmond. I’ve seen Braveheart twice in my life and am intelligent enough to know its a highly fictionalised account of something which happened hundreds of years ago. I don’t think we should have to wear kilts and all speak Gaelic.
I’m you.
I’m a normal Scot. I have a wife and kids, drive a car that’s over ten years old, really need to get round to digging my garden before the weeds take over completely, and make fatuous comments about the weather on the two days a year it’s actually sunny. I believe Billy Connolly was right when he said that wanting to be a politician should automatically stop you getting to be one. I just happen to have done some research into things and didn’t like what I found out.
You can too. Follow the blog, ask questions, check out Facebook and Twitter. Following the links to other sources, other bloggers, fill your head with the information like I did and then make your own decision.
It may not be the same as mine. I can respect that as long as you’ve done the research. If every single Scot gets fully informed before the referendum I’ll be happy. If we all make our own decision on how to vote, instead of taking the BBC or Scotsman slant as our own without consideration, people like me (and there are thousands) have done their job against the vastness of the UK State media. And if we still vote No, I’ll put my hands up and accept I was wrong.
But what if I’m not….
Fraser Gilmour
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