For my fortieth birthday, I climbed aboard a Ryanair jet and
headed for Dublin’s fair city. It took about five minutes to get there and half
a day to get back. When I come to write my autobiography (what do you mean ‘you
mean this isn’t it?’) the return leg of the journey may well take pride of
place, as it is still one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me,
for all the wrong reasons, but I digress (as usual).
I never used to support the idea of Scottish independence.
I’m British, my ancestors were British (even the Irish ones, whether or not
they approved) and I’ve been steeped in British (English) history and culture
since I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper. Scaremongering wasn't going to work on me. I was never frightened of
the prospect of living in a poverty-stricken, Third World country at the back
of beyond because I was already living in one. By the time the Scottish
National Party was making waves in all those General Elections we had in 1974,
I’d already lived through one Wilson administration’s devaluing the Pound and
most of the last of our colonies telling the Man from the Ministry to shove it.
Over the years, the SNP’s fortunes at the ballot box waxed
and waned (relatively speaking), it had leadership troubles and it made up enough
slogans to keep Saatchi & Saatchi in business for a generation. It even
expelled the very man who one day would lead it to the brink of achieving its
ultimate aim. No, I was against Independence because, as a Glaswegian, the idea
of an independent Scotland run by Labour was not only anathema, it was the
stuff of nightmares.
At that early age, and for many years after, I resolved that
I’d move to England should the split occur, but I was too naïve to realise that
the political establishment would never allow it to happen (Independence, not my moving to England). The Tories, friends
of the landed gentry (and, in some cases, the actual landed gentry) would never
sanction it in case the old duffers found themselves relieved of their grouse
moors. To this day, post-Thatcher, the lesser-spotted Tories are only elected
to national office in Scotland from rural constituencies and posh Edinburgh
postcodes. Labour, on the other hand, has almost always required Scottish MPs
to give it a majority (or what passes for one in these days of low turnout) to
form a Government and get its legislation on to the Statute Book. In return,
Scottish Labour MPs are given power and patronage disproportionate to their
ability, their grace and favour benefits bestowed in perpetuity. It’s no wonder
that the People’s Party, the party of the workers, the downtrodden and the
dispossessed, doesn’t want any man to put asunder, especially when that man is
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond.
The coach trip from the airport and subsequent
perambulations revealed what was to me a hitherto unknown wealth of Georgian and Victorian
architecture that made Dublin look like any other British city. For the five
days I was there, I found it hard to believe I was in a foreign country, even
if that country was, is and always will be inextricably linked to its neighbour
across the Irish Sea. The currency was different, the accent was different, the
attitude of the people was different, but I could almost feel at home. Of
course, a trip to the Post Office in O’Connell Street was sufficient to shake
me out of that particular dream, but it also made me think ‘what if?’ What if
we had faith enough to step out on our own? What if, for once, we took a risk
and decided that we wanted more control over our affairs? What if we grew up
and became, in the words of an Irish song, a nation once again?
That time is almost upon us. The SNP won an unexpected
landslide victory in May’s Scottish elections, defying the very system that was
meant to prevent such an occurrence. Their vote in Aberdeenshire, for example,
where they won all of the first-past-the-post seats, was so great that they
were even awarded a List seat, an unprecedented event that surprised the
victor: he can be seen in video footage as one of a huddle of party workers
celebrating in a luminous yellow jacket before he realises that he’s the one
who has been elected!
The party has a clear mandate to govern as it promised in
its manifesto. With great power comes great responsibility but none of those
returned would claim to be superheroes. What they can claim, however, is that
they will be honest with the electorate, and I hope they will be. They have
said that there will be a referendum in the second half of the parliamentary
term (extended, very considerately by Mr. Salmond, to five years to avoid a
clash with the UK General Election in 2015). Even for the hard of thinking,
that means that we will not encounter this plebiscite, or have to worry about
it, much before 2014.
What’s so wrong with keeping promises made in an election
manifesto or during a campaign? I know Labour has trouble with that concept:
Tuition fees? Top-up tuition fees? Re-nationalising the railways? If I could be
bothered to read their election literature, I could probably have filled this
entire blog with their broken promises and their surprise packages. The Tory Health
bill alone shows that one half of the Coalition is happy to deceive, and as for
the LibDems, playing fast and loose with the truth for the sake of a ride in a
Ministerial car is becoming the norm. Not one of them can be trusted to do the
right thing, so if the SNP adheres to even a fraction of its manifesto
commitments, it will be able to command the moral high ground, with only itself
for company.
I do not need such a vantage point to see what is afoot at
Westminster. A whispering campaign by vested interests to have London call a
referendum on ‘its’ terms is well and truly gathering steam. Salmond and others
are playing it cool, up to a point, but this patronising, imperialist attitude
cannot go unchallenged indefinitely. If I hadn’t felt that patriotic tingling
in Ireland’s capital all those years ago, I would now. If there’s one thing
sure to get my dander up, it’s people who poke their nose into my business and
tell me what I can and can’t do. Bring it on, Alex.
Finally, for now, the death was announced yesterday of
bandleader Edmundo Ros, at the age of 100. As a very small child, I remember
hearing him presenting a show on the Light Programme (which became Radio 2). I
used to stand in front of the wireless with a pen or pencil and conduct the music
he played. There’s one 78rpm record by Edmundo in my mother’s collection, and
it was a source of great amusement and delight to me in my early teenage years
when I finally got a record player but had nothing of my own to play. It
was his rendition of ‘Scotland The Brave’.
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