The Netherlands for Scottish Independence March & Rally was held on 25May in the Hague. One of the invited speakers was our own Mary McCabe, a member of the Glasgow Group an co-convenor of our National Group.
As well as showing off our P4Indy T-shirt, Mary told the audience how we are campaigning in Scotland. She also told them the background to setting up the Glasgow P4Indy choir “The Warblers” and did a solo rendition of our Warblers’ song “The Union – A Tragedy”. After all that she regaled the Hague audience with events from three years ago at the Yes Arts Festival – that’s YES as in Yarrow, Ettrick and Selkirk – and a conversation she had with the Duke of Buccleuch who was handing out the prizes, one of which was for Mary’s poem “The Merch o’ the Babyboomers”. She finishes by reciting the poem to much warm applause.
Here is the video of Mary’s spot:
The whole NL4Indy2019 event can be seen here videoed by Independence Live. And you can find out more about Netherlands4Indy on their website here.
Here are some reflections from Mary herself about the event:
“I didn’t know if any other Pensioners for Indy would make it over to the Hague but when I got there I was pleased to see Angie Maxwell who is on our Publicity committee.
The event was very well organised. Prominent location for the set off (the park just in front of the Hague Central Station), well-chosen route past all the embassies and high quality stage and sound equipment.
The only disappointing aspect was the turnout. This is the third year Netherlands for Scottish Independence have put on this rally for us and each year the turnout has been about 50% of what it was the year before. Maybe this is because of its low profiIe (mainly word of mouth from folk who already know about it and are Facebook Friends with the organisation).
With the UK Government’s attitude to Scottish politics moving from ignorant and unsupportive to suspicious and hostile it’s really important to maintain international support for our cause. When a group in the Netherlands goes to all the effort of putting this on for us we should try to support it. It’s not the dark side of the moon – there are several flights a day from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Amsterdam which take little more than an hour and then the Hague is less than an hour away by a frequent train. The world is growing small!
There’s also an annual German for Scottish Independence rally which takes place in Berlin and is usually a bit better attended. Check out Facebook for details.”