The P4Indy folk in Dumfries and Galloway have been giving away money! Chocolate money.
This is their cracking response to their local MP’s recent statement about the worth of a future independent Scotland’s own currency. He said the folk in Dumfriesshire wouldn’t want it. We’re hoping to hear back from Dumfries P4Indy on how many of his constituents refused the chocs! 🤣
Yesterday saw the first of the AUOB marches wend its way through Glasgow. It definitely wasn’t the right time to try exiting the M8 at Charing Cross! Police reckon 35,000 made it Glasgow Green but unofficial tallies put it at nearer 80,000. Either way it was a lot of independence supporters.
Here’s how Mary McCabe, one of our Glasgow P4Indy members and co-convenor of the Nationial P4Indy Group , describes it:
Yesterday was a great success for the pro-Indy movementl. Depending on whom you believe, numbers ranged from 150,000 on the total march to 35,000 actually making it all the way to Glasgow Green. At the Green, there were lots of stalls including our Pensioners for Indy double stall, lots of speeches and live music – with an efficient sound system! Yet at the end the park was so pristine clean that the organisers proudly printed a picture of it on FB.
Our new unicorn Greater Glasgow Pensioners banner shimmered beautifully above all the flags made a great show and was photographed and commented on several times. We didn’t get to all march together as planned; those who arrived early at the meeting point at the Suffragette Tree were moved on to different spots by stewards so that when I arrived with the banner there were only two – Jeannie Campbell and Brian Watson – left. As the march advanced up Kelvin Way the three of us slipped into a natural space in the parade – we genuinely didn’t realise this counted as queue-jumping! Meanwhile the large Edinburgh Pensioners for Indy contingent had to wait for over an hour on a hill in Kelvingrove Park before being allocated a slot and given the go-ahead. Still, and we all got to Glasgow Green in the end.
We had a double stall using both new gazebos. There were half a dozen of us serving and we were all kept busy with queues the whole time. The food and drink flew off the shelves. All 20 of the T-shirts were sold and there’s a waiting list of folk who were too late to get one (I’ll be ordering more this week). Virtually all of Sheena’s jewellery sold too. We were kept busy till after 6.30. The takings haven’t been counted yet but they must amount to several hundred.
Want a T-shirt? Send us a message via the Contact Form from the top of the page and we’ll send you details of how to get one.
The remaining All Under One Banner marches for 2019 are:
It would be great to have big turnouts of P4Indy. I will be bringing the banner to every rally and several Penioners have said they’re planning to go. If the Waverley is repaired by the end of July it’s a lovely sail down to Campbeltown. The turnout at the smaller towns is likely to be 10,000 to 20,000 and at Edinburgh at least 150,000. Everyone smiling and singing with the crowds on the pavements waving and smiling back at us. At the end there’s music, speeches and stuff to eat and buy in a park. A great family day out.
The serious purpose is even more important: when people witness thousands of friendly cheerful folk, some from far afield, demonstrating for independence down their own high streets it gets harder for Unionists and their friends in the media to claim “There’s no appetite for independence. Nobody wants another referendum. Everybody’s bored with politics. Referendums are ugly and divisive.” If anybody feels like going further afield The Netherlands for Scottish Independence rally is on Saturday May 25th at the Hague. More details here:
Netherlands Scottish Independence Rally. I attended the previous two years and will be going again this year wearing the new unicorn T-shirt and singing our song on the platform. Usually around 200 turn up and there are good speeches and music. No requirement to speak Dutch!
Over the past few months, our membership secretary has been busy contacting people on our mailing list, telling them how many other people on our mail list are in their area, and asking if they would be interested in getting together to meet locally.
We’ve been speaking to people in Fife, Stirling, Hamilton & Motherwell, and Selkirk.
We know that it can be daunting to set up a new group. But we have people in our Edinburgh & Lothians Group and our Greater Glasgow Group who have acquired enough experience to offer a helping hand. We also have some funds which mean we can help new groups get off the ground with the expenses of hiring a meeting room or setting up a street stall.
It was great to have two Fifers, Craig and Lorna, coming over to our national coordinating group meeting this week. If you’d like to be put in touch with what’s happening in P4Indy Fife, then let us know using the contact form from the top of this page.
This graph show where people on our mailing list live. As you can see, there are some areas that have quite a showing of people interested in P4Indy but where there isn’t a local group. If you would like to find others in your area to link up with, use the Contact form at top of the page.
This is me, Marlene, on IndyLive Radio last week. I was a bit nervous about doing it but Norrie was very good at getting the ball rolling and keeping it rolling! Once I got into my stride, I really enjoyed it. I asked Val Gauld, our Glasgow Twitter person, along as well. As you can see she was tweeting as I was speaking. She joined in the chat, too.
Norrie asked me about how P4Indy got set up. Then I had lots of time to tell his listeners about our AGM, about our push to help new P4Indy groups get off the ground and the funding we have for doing that, about the street stalls we run in and around Scotland, and about the Warblers, our concert party.
I also talked about the low numbers, only about 1 in 4, of over 65s who supported Yes in the 2014 campaign, some of the factors involved in that, and how we might engage with those. It does seem from recent polling done at the end of 2018 that more of our age group are coming round to Yes and it’s more like 1 in 3 support independence. Still some way to go and as I said to Norrie, it’s to help push that figure up that I joined P4Indy.
The hardest question Norrie asked me was what song track I wanted to play as we took a wee break from speaking. I’m not much of a pop music fan but I lived through the 60s and 70s so I settled for a Beatles’ track. I suspect Norrie was humouring my very old choice! After that I got to present that week’s community announcements from The National. And I got to announce the “Walloper of the Week Award” which last week went to Labour MP Paul Sweeney for his rather over the top response to ScotGov’s wee video about us being open and welcoming country. He thought it was “smarmy, saccharine, bourgeois tripe”. If you want to find out what else the man said and what responses he got, look here.
They call their studio The Broomcupboard! Aye, it is pretty wee. I liked it but it must be hard for Norrie and Kevin to work there all the time. Kevin showed me a bigger space in the same building that he hoped to be able to move to. And I hear that has now gone ahead. These guys are working on a shoestring when it comes to funding. If you can help them with a few spare pounds, please do. This is their website: IndyLive Radio
Sheena Stephen one of the people who runs our P4Indy stall in Glasgow went to the rally held on 24 March in George Square.. Here’s what she said about it:
Despite the miserable rainy morning we decided to go for it and get the Glasgow Group stall along to the Hope Over Fear Rally. It was a good call. The sun came out. And Mary, Neil & dug. Heather, Valerie & myself all enjoyed the experience. Even with rather gusty winds which put our stock of leaflets in danger of being blown away!
The atmosphere was happy and positive – which cheered me. There was a good range of age groups and many 50+ men & women came from all over central Scotland. Some America visitors joined us too. One chap asked if we were celebrating our independence day!
People were very generous with donations and all our saltire earrings, flags, and painted stones were disappearing quickly. Heather’s pained stones were popular with children though she made them to hold down our leaflets in the wind!
We did find time to take some photos.
This was also the occasion of the first tweet in our @P4IndyGlasgow twitter feed and as you can see from the stats it was a well-received tweet. Two days after that we had 1700 Twitter followers. Well done Val for setting it up and being our tweeter person!
