An open letter to all of the SNP’s elected representatives
I have a question.
I came of age politically in the period leading up to Indyref 1, as I waited
expectantly for the favoured outcome of Scottish Independence, I like so many
others was full of hope and optimism for the future. Yet it wasn’t to be and
2,001,926 of my fellow Scots settled for the status quo and chose to surrender
the absolute sovereignty they’d held in their hands for a mere fifteen hours on
Referendum Day.
I’d never before worn my politics on my sleeve but in the summer of 2014 I was there on the street corner whenever I could. Long before the days of Believe in Scotland, I’d discovered the Financial Times analysis proving an Independent Scotland had what it takes to prosper and it fronted my sandwich board as I directed the interested and curious to the Yes hub for more information.
So in the intervening seven years how have we built on those amazing
foundations or is the realpolitik that the Yes movement and the SNP have
reached the proverbial seven year itch in their relationship?
Six weeks following that fateful day at the November Perth conference the slick presentation and surging membership was the background to the coronation of a new First Minister at an event, observed by the redoubtable Brian Taylor, which was more “victory rally than wake”. The following weekend the process of transcending from mere politician to rock star began at the the sell-out Hydro gig.
May 2015 saw the historic landslide victory of 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats and the scenario which Margaret Thatcher couldn’t have imagined when she conceded that a majority of SNP MPs would indeed constitute the clearest of mandates to negotiate for Independence. It truly was a wipe out of the Better Together band of Labour, the Lib Dem’s and Torys unable to withstand the SNP tsunami and perhaps best illustrated by a 20-year-old newbie named Mhairi Black dumping Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary and heavyweight, Douglas Alexander.
We really were motoring weren’t we?
Then the Aberdeen conference a mere five months later with 3,500 conference
delegates and the claim of 114,121 members, with activists old and new
bringing strong opinions and hungry to be more radical than the party line on
fracking and land reform. Despite some misgivings most of us were feeling
empowered at the prospects of the 2016 Holyrood election.
Perhaps the cover of the manifesto, simply bearing a picture of the leader, and
the single word “re-elect” was the evidence of misgivings and the emergence of the move to presidential style politics.
But another big victory. Not only did the SNP win more than a million votes for
63 seats to give “a clear and unequivocal mandate” to govern as a minority
administration.
What must you guys have been feeling like?
Then came Brexit,but not to worry our traditions were European, our legal
system had European roots, our history was European. William Wallace’s letter
to the Senate of Lubeck, Scots architects in Catherine the Great’s St Petersburgc ourt, Scots generals in Sweden’s army, the Auld Alliance for goodness sake
The Hanseatic merchant networks, Danzig as a source of reliable timber for the great houses of Scotland, anyway they couldn’t possibly be stupid enough tovote to leave. Could they?
In Scotland Remain won a resounding victory of 62% on a 67% turnout.
Except we hadn’t won had we? This was the tipping point and start of the rot for me.
I wanted and voted to live in Europe, not a version of Singapore or an
offshore American state. I didn’t appreciate the FM campaigning to stop Brexit, something that was clearly the wish of the English electorate.
I want to have political choices that have meaning, compassionate governance with a social contract between the nation and it’s people.
I want social democratic values to inform my politics with workers rights and
consensus politics, and an end to winner takes all.
I want to live in a country where nuclear convoys no longer transit our largest
city in the night.
I want to be part of a society with a collaborative approach to tackling wars and displacement that makes the protection of the environment a priority.
We were promised we wouldn’t be dragged out of Europe against our will and
the political gavotte that took place in the Palace of Westminster between
Theresa May, our First Minister’s representative Ian Blackford and Johnson the ‘proroguer’ can only be viewed as a comedy of errors as far as Scotland’s interest were concerned.
Let’s be clear the English Parliament with it’s absolute power of the Crown has the numbers to do what it likes in protecting England’s interests.
The democratic deficit is just too great for Scotland to overcome.
With a mere five weeks to the seventh anniversary of that fateful day what is
there to show for the marches, the campaigns, and all that passion?
Well perm any three from the following to see how impoverished we are:
• Caledonian MacBrayne ferries either in the Western Isles or in an
InverClyde shipyard are a scandal at the height of a tourist season
already badly impacted by COVID.
• We have the worst drug deaths in Europe – no more comment required.
• In the year of COP26 we are to take delivery of turbine towers made and
shipped from the other side of the world to be installed off the beach
from a mothballed fabrication yard in Fife
• The novelty of a legal system where malicious prosecutions are acknowledged, public apologies made and compensation duly settled. An elderly, not the ‘right kind of journalist’ sent to jail for producing a one piece jigsaw. Oh and a government found guilty of a very expensive error of judgement which the judge declared to have been “tainted by apparent bias.”
• A Scottish NHS about to collapse through abandonment by a
demoralised workforce suffering from COVID burnout and pension
revisions which add to evaporating morale.
• COP26 is the biggest international conference ever hosted by the UK
government and at a pivotal moment for global action on the climate crisis.
Glasgow will be the world stage on which the political Houdini of our
modern age of fake news, the master of half truths and serial liar, Johnson
the ‘ proroguer’ will strut his stuff in his team GB track suit. Scotland’s
contribution?
• Land reform proposals which at the conference in 2015 were sent back
as insufficiently radical is noticeable only because of hydrogen gas
networks and the royal interference.
• Education, that rock on which the Scottish government has regularly
staked its reputation is now in the hands of someone with a penchant
for invisibility cloaks.
So with the famed Leninist party discipline of the SNP now spilling over into civic society the questions really are:
What will history’s view be of your contribution to the party of independence?
What will history’s view be of your contribution to the cause of independence?
Is this really the legacy of the woman who went to London fifty four years ago in 1967 shouting “stop the world, Scotland wants to get on”?
Iain Bruce,
Nairn
Excellent SNP Report Card from Iain Bruce, to which we might add:
‘Scotland has the highest prison population rate per head in Western Europe’, and which has been rising since 2016. https://www.scottishlegal.com/article/scotland-has-highest-prison-population-rate-per-head-in-western-europe
I can think of a way to reduce that by one very easily.
Legalise drugs.
Iain Bruce. Your commentary reinforced exactly what do many of us think
However, and we should be under no illusion about this, but the UK state is at war.
Vicious, nasty, brutal, insidious. Political jailing, media suppression, arms of the state corrupt and malign, interference and suppression, its all there.
And if needed the same state will kill too.
Folks should read about the depth of coordinated covert and some not so covert activities over 30 years in Ireland.
The current wave of police and prosecution of nationalists is one thing, but the death of Willie McRae reinforces what ultimately the British state will resort to in the suppression of an independence movement.
Read Brigadier General Sir Frank Kitson, or about Brigadier Gordon Kerr of the Force Research Unit.
“It’s all the fault of the ‘British state’, Sturgeon is innocent! ”
Aye, right.
I tolerate Unionists like yourself on here Marty because their inane drivel let’s us know what we are up against. If you want to be allowed to keep participating on these threads can I respectfully suggest you add something to the debate nit just whine. Last and final warning.
I came up from Lincolnshire with my wife who was born in Yorkshire and we met Sturgeon in Edinburgh on the Sturgeon grand tour and when we left that night, we both said Sturgeon wasn’t interested in Independence she more interested in fame and fortune and the SNP doing the Grand Tour Nicola Sturgeon was our biggest mistake it went right to her head.
Excellent letter, but everything I hear about the SNP allowing 4yrs old to choose their own gender I’ve come to think Independence is secondary to getting rid of the SNP in government and as a political party.
The “sell-out Hydro gig”.
Indeed it was … in more ways than one.
…and that is why I and many others left the Party. The SNP are no longer the Party of Independence. They are a cult now, focused only on holding local power within the British State.
The Murrell Mafia now run Scotland.
Every word of this will ring true to every Scottish independence supporter, We must grasp the Thistle again and take what we need, the power is in the hands of the Scottish people.
Wow! I felt every word of that, I relate to every word of it, STURGEON has been the worse thing to happen to the SNP Party and this country. She is one NASTY dangerous woman..A proven LIAR, with an ego the size of Wembley stadium, I used Wembley as she seems to prefer LONDON these days to Scotland.. I want to see her brought down, I want to see her exposed for the LIAR she is, I want to see her EXPELLED from the Party and removed from the history of it, and I would love to see her spend sometime in Jail for the injustices she & her nasty Lord Advocate and corrupt COPFS have been bringing down on members of the public just to shit them up as she tried to do with Alex Salmond..
You are spot on and my wishes on what happens to the treacherous NS align with yours too.
William Wallace handed over to the English to be murdered by a cabal of Scottish representatives. No Scottish institution tried to help him. Is history repeating its self, think Murray, Salmond so forth and so on. Parcel of rouges doesn’t even cover it.
Nicola Sturgeon is destroying the SNP, and has become the largest single obstacle to independence.
Such is her massive superiority – complex, she has a brass – neck to whine about “Salmod’s ego”.
A cracker of a brass neck Alan. The level of deceit involved here is hard to get the head around.
On the issue of the Alec Salmond persecution – the press know the craic, the truth. The traditional media/press and the state are great pals and that same press in Scotland have proved beyond any doubt that they despise the SNP and the Independence cause. Yet they decline as a body to report on a political story that would destroy the SNP Government and instead choose to protect Sturgeon, Murrell and the rest of the SNP leadership.
Its straightforward enough to my mind. If there is a still a doubt there for some ( I gave this shower the benefit of the doubt for far too long myself) then they should take a wee retrospective at the actions of Nicola Sturgeon over the past 7 years in relation to whether those actions unified a movement and advanced the Scottish case or had the opposite effect.
Alan Hunter, Sturgeon isn’t destroying the SNP she has already destroyed it, the only people left in HR are the yes’ ma’am anything you say ma’am brigade, if they weren’t they wld have been stopping this HCB & this obsession with GRA and allowing kids, THEIR kids and Grandkids to practically self ID at 4yrs old..
As for those cowards sitting as MPs in WM. cheering at one of the stupid lying slogans Blackford comes up with and NOT one of them standing up for Joanna Cherry, not even the other lesbians among them. Phillipa Whiteford a huge disappointment refusing to see how wrong the move on removing Joanna was, and said NOWT about the social media to Rape & kill attacks on Cherry. Where was her caring nature then?
Ok! Angus Brendan O’Neil plays safe, posts about Independence, but not brave enough to resign and sit either as an Independent or join the ALBA 2.
I would be surprised if he even got selected for the next GE election, wonder if he will jump ship then..Same with Joanna, there is no way they are going to allow her to stand again..
There is NO-ONE in the SNP I trust anymore, the whole party is rotten to the core, it can’t be saved it has to be replaced, & I just hope that the voters realise the SNP are not the party of Independence anymore…
ALBA & ISP are. If you don’t like Alex then join or vote for ISP.. BOTH have Independence as their priority.. And with a bit of luck BOTH will do what the SNP wouldn’t & work together to take seats from the SNP as well as UNIONISTS, just as Labour did for Tories in 2017 & then take this country to Independence… If anyone can, if anyone is brave enough, it IS Alex Salmond.. He has nowt to lose now but a helluva lot to gain..
I hope helping Jail Sturgeon is up there on his to do list as well.. Let’s see how she wiggles out of her lies, cause she sure as hell didn’t do a good job under pressure during their own Harassment Committee. LIARS seldom do..
Lots of pertinent questions from Ian. No answers as far as I can see. My answers? Agitate for action. Treat every day as a referendum day. Get out the Saltires, pro-indy posters stickers badges etc and display them as loudly and proudly as possible. Get up people’s noses, especially the SNP’s. Continue to write letters to the press and comment online. Donate as much as possible to pro-indy websites. Get up britnat noses even with, especially with, strong determined openly anti-British opinion. Those of you who are still in the SNP must be doubly disruptive inside the party towards the criminal inactivity displayed by the SNP leadership.
Alba members must keep its leadership on its toes too. Peaceful civil disobedience must be seriously considered and planned for. If those in the SNP leadership are our redundant Redmondites, Alba must be Scotland’s Sinn Fein. Agitate for action.
Superb article.
NSNP lethargy has been imposed on us and the only way we can break it is to take to the streets.
Kate you’re absolutely right Sturgeon isn’t destroying the SNP she’s already destroyed it job done
I don’t see any way it can possibly be resurrected as a party of independence, that woman has single handedly managed to take us from the closest we’ve to the ultimate prize of independence in over 300 years to facing the gravest threat to our country’s existence in over 300 years. that’s quite an achievement
Sadly time is running out for us, Peter Bell continually labours the point that ALBA isn’t the answer that they will never gain enough support in time to save Scotland and he may well be right, but nonetheless they along with ISP are the only hope we have, we need to get behind them in numbers and we need to do it fast.
RIP SNP
No Scottish political party is the answer. Not while they treat the English government and its establishment as the sole authority of GB. Alba do have the opportunity though as a brand new party to become the answer but only if they treat Scotland as an equal partner with equal authority to the state and assert Scotland’s authority at all times. They must call out the SNP members of the Scottish government every single time they treat the English government as the sole authority. They need to be seen to be taking direct action not just spouting what they think folk want to hear. Only then will folk take notice and demand action as well.
I have said for the last few years that ANYONE who believes in Scotland reasserting itself as a independent STATE (which obviously excludes Sturgeon) will go down in the history books , will be taught to children through lessons in school , will be revered as the saviour of Scotland’s future and people’s, their name will forever go down in history and will always be quoted as the person who freed Scotland and saved our future
WHO would NOT wish to be remembered as that person to receive that ACCOLADE , that Sturgeon deliberately and wilfully avoids being that person highlights and illuminates the need to question her veracity , ability and honesty in leading our country , she
is indeed Scotland’s BETRAYER