My Journey to YES

In a break from writing stuff and cruise stuff, a wee bit of political stuff. Fell free to ignore and wait for the more light hearted stuff to return.

A Journey to YES

It’s 4^th May 1979. I’m 16. My mum is calling me to come downstairs and watch this historic event. She’s never voted Tory, and never would, but she can’t help being impressed that a woman has finally become Prime Minister, albeit this woman, from this party. She wants me to watch, to share in this moment.

Reluctantly, I relent and join her in front of the TV. I’m not madly political at this age, but I know enough to know that I don’t like right wing policies, and I don’t care if this is the first woman PM – she’s from the wrong party, and policies and party are far more important than gender or personality or being ‘first’ at something.

That voice, the one most of us will grow to hate, already makes my skin crawl as it says: Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Well, we were soon to learn, had we ever doubted it, that that was complete bollocks.

I couldn’t vote until after October 1980, so I had no influence. It didn’t take me long to learn that I would never have any real influence. By the next general election, in 1983, I had already decided that I would never vote Tory because they didn’t care about Scotland (or, as it often seemed, basic human decency). Quite right, to be fair – from a political point of view, why waste your time on a place where you will never win votes? I had also decided there wasn’t much point to voting Labour – they didn’t seem to be that bothered about us either. Again, quite right – why waste time and energy on a place where your vote is pretty much guaranteed? Far better to start changing your party, to slide further towards right, in the hope of gaining new support or regaining old support. Don’t blame them in the slightest – it was what they felt was politically sound.

That left me, as far as I recall, with the Liberals, the SDP and the SNP. In the end I decided that, since my vote had little or no influence in Westminster, that I’d opt for the SNP and hope that one day we would achieve independence. No one else had any particular cause to care much about us; surely we’d be better off taking care of ourselves?

That doesn’t mean that I loved all SNP policies, or that I was convinced they had the best leader – to be honest, I don’t even remember who that was. I know I could google this stuff, but I’m trying to give you it from memory, to take you through my thought processes as I remember them. I opted for the SNP because I wanted my vote to count. I understood – still understand – that I wouldn’t necessarily get the government I voted for in an independent Scotland, but at least a greater percentage of my countrymen would get what they had voted for.

Oddly, I’m in agreement with some of my NO voting friends on this point. I agree that Scotland gets exactly the representation it should in Westminster. We are a tiny nation. Why should a nation of 5 million dictate to a nation of 55 million? That would not only be wrong, it would be ridiculous. But while my NO friends see this as a reason to stay, that we have the correct level of representation, I see it as a reason to go. My country will only ever get the UK government it votes for by chance, if it just so happens to tally with the desire of the country with the larger population. While that is, technically, fair, it’s not good enough for me. I don’t believe it’s good enough for my country.

That was how I came to support independence. I’ll blog again about more specific points (unless the comments on this get too ugly, of course) but I just wanted to share, as others have, my journey to YES, which started long before YES was even a real option.