From Noon Wednesday
I am delighted to be bringing back our midweek special podcasts. In these we usually cover non-Scottish political events.We also like to bring you special guest interviews. This week we have a very special guest, author, playwright one time, school teacher and university lecturer as well as one of Falkirk’s favourite sons, Alan Bissett.
Alan came to the notice of the Scottish public during the Scottish independence referendum campaign of 2014.In 2012 Alan became “Cultural Ambassador for the National Collective, a creative organisation which supports Scottish Independence.
Throughout the referendum campaign Alan worked tirelessly attending hustings and town halls throughout the country. He was without doubt one of the hardest working and committed campaigners at that monumental time in Scotland’s journey towards independence.
Like all of us on the YES side of the campaign he took the loss badly. Just a few weeks before the actual vote Alan made a video where he outlined his concerns if Scotland voted no! He was eerily accurate in his forecast of how our English imperial masters would react to their victory.
Post September 2014 Alan returned to civvy life and has since rarely been seen on the political circuit. He returns today to share his experiences of that time what he has being doing in the intervening years and his thoughts and hopes for the future, for himself and his nation of birth.
Great discussion Roddy. Reminds me of Alan’s memorable ‘Vote Britain’ speech on Calton Hill prior to indyref14.
But, as we can see he is maybe just a wee bit behind the curve, and people on the Left tend also tend to disregard postcolonial theory, thinking independence is mainly a class battle and about socialism versus capitalism, rather than an oppressed (doun-hauden) people removing a racist system of colonial exploitation that underpins their inequality and wretchedness.
He has perhaps also missed the shift whereby an independence movement, once it develops a better understanding of the colonial situation, starts to become a liberation movement, and where the people begin to realise what independence really means, i.e. decolonization.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/05/25/the-three-phases-of-decolonization-lessons-for-scotland/
Good Prism, Roddy. Noticed that Alan has the same bookcase as we do. Sorry, just an aside. Alan seemed a little bit teed off as if he has all but given up on the people who should be delivering independence. Can’t say I blame him. These past ten years have been so disappointing, so filled with despair. Everything he said would happen if we voted NO, has happened, and I think he might be right about Farage. A strong showing for Farage and Reform will waken up more than a few people. Many English people up here will vote for him. That is a dead cert.
I had to agree with his despair at English voting in the referendum, too. I can’t get my head round doing that either. What he hasn’t understood is that there are lots of people who want a better life but want to remain English. There were retired British/English people in Spain who voted for Brexit! Wilful self-harm seems to be a part of human make-up right across the board. Just look at that Dr Upton: every word out of his mouth bounces off a mirror and reflects back on him. Like him, in relation to women, those NO voting English people had not an iota of understanding for, or empathy with, independence-seeking Scots. Indeed, in some of the debates, they displayed, like him, in relation to women, a vicious and cruel negation of others’ sensibilities, needs and desires. It’s hard to accept, but it is true. Me-ism is widespread.
They will not be easily persuaded either, and that is why an entirely different route has to be found, one that is based on constitutionalism and law, and that can be found only through the Treaty and Claim of Right. Only after that, should politics come into it. We have been trapped in devolution, and devolution is totally ultra vires according to the Treaty unless, and until, England is also devolved. Not devolved into counties and areas, but devolved as a country within the UK.
That will never happen because it would give the rest of us total equality at Westminster on UK-wide issues, and England-as-the-UK would cease to exist. Alf’s colonial theory then comes into play because a refusal to have all four parts equal at Westminster and England devolved, with a separate English parliament, would be the epitome of colonialism. They might lose, sometimes. England-as-the-UK will never make any moves towards equality within the UK, so we have no choice but to kick-start proceedings as we did in 2014, unsuccessfully, of course. The constitutional route, based on breaching of the Treaty and unequal treatment would be far more successful because all the transgressions are to be found in Hansard, proving that they already know they are behaving in a colonial fashion. We should never have acquiesced in devolved status because it has been a bind on us of our own making, just as signing that bloody Treaty has been.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvheASRITtY
The above is a link the Hindustan Times which covered the entire JD Vance speech to the Munich conference yesterday.
As speeches go it is very well worth a listen. The comments about leaders not listening to their people, their censoring of the media, their feeding the media with misinformation, the use of the law to oppress, silence and jail political opponents is very poignant.
We have certainly seen that here in Scotland with the laws that have restricted free speech, the intimidation and jailing and attempted jailing of politicians and journalists, and the control of the media. Alex Salmond, Mark Hirst, Craig Murray, Marion Millar, the Hate Crime Legislation, the media control, its all here and democracy is the loser.
No one here can reasonably conclude that democracy and free speech is not under threat. Indeed, this post might not even make it onto the pages of Barrhead Boy.
Democracy is something that needs to be guarded, to be protected, but from what many now see, that is not now the case. Scotland the colony, and the wider UK is most certainly not the open democracy that the system would try to have you believe.
JD Vance’s speech, whether you agree or disagree, like or dislike, is well worth a listen.
But is it under threat from the ‘far right’, Willie? This mantra is chanted out any time anyone says anything that is not part of the narrative du jour. What we are actually living under is a totalitarian state that has not quite wiped out all dissent or democracy. It was hatched in a hard left lab, and the Upton tribunal is just a tiny sample of the nonsense we all have to endure, but which has so many faces.
We should never be complacent about the right/far right because it can rise again, without doubt, and it is almost always the hard left that ushers it in, in the UK, but the totalitarians are every bit as dangerous and dogmatic, perhaps more so. Globalism has propelled business and investment into all parts of the globe, with the resultant loss of investment here. Who or what fills the gap, but at no benefit to the people? Foreign business and investment. One by one, our domestic industries are swallowed by up foreign business opportunities that use foreign labour or labour at very low unit cost here, and the profits are siphoned off into the mother country or, more likely, into private pockets, off-shore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts. Corruption is so widespread that it is now almost impossible to reverse.
First may I applaud you for this PRISM I always admired Alan’s common sense approach and his perception of what would happen which unfortunately has been proven to be correct , but I agree with Lorna he seems to be very dispirited and disinterested on the way forward , having family responsibilities can do that ,but what Allan has to realise is that he is NOT just fighting for himself and others he is fighting for the future of his children , he is part of the spearhead to make his children’s future BETTER , I have always been extremely aggrieved that we indigenous Scots were ROBBED of our independence and a better future for our children by incomers whose selfishness could not see or refused to see what we were fighting for , this entitlement of non Scots demanding a vote on the constitutional future of our birth country is unsavoury and people being charitably aggreeable are NOT looking around the world and seeing the devastating impact this charitable inclusivity is having on indigenous people’s beliefs and freedoms