Fife

End Pensioner Poverty. Glagow March for Independence

Let’s End Pensioner Poverty

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End Pensioner Poverty was the theme of Saturday’s march and rally in Glasgow.

End Pensioner Poverty. Glagow March for Independence

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Pensioners for Indy partnered with Believe in Scotland to put on this event. it was a big jog and we have been involved with the planning of it over the past six months. Members from our Fife, Glasgow, Selkirk and Ayr groups were in the steering group, along with some of the Believe in Scotland team.

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Marlene Halliday, who is Treasurer of our National Coordinating Group as well as a member of the Glasgow Group,was one of the speakers at the rally.

There are two suggestions for action in Marlene’s talk. One is about addressing pensioner poverty by creating a Scottish Pensioners Payment similar to the Scottish Child Payment. The second is about addressing the two thirds of older voters who are still not convinced about independence. She intends writing her speech up for the National and if possible talking to Young Scots for Independence at their conference next month.

Here is her speech:

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Mary McCabe, Co-Convenor of our National Group as well as a member our Greater Glasgow group, has written some more about the day:

Saturday was a glorious day in all senses. Even the sun turned out for the first pro-indy march of 2024. 

This was the first time Pensioners for Indy has been involved at the organisational level of a major demonstration (in partnership with Believe in Scotland) and members from our branches in Edinburgh & Lothians, Selkirk, Dumfries & Galloway, Fife and of course Greater Glasgow all brought their banners to march behind the big horizontal banner we’d commissioned for the occasion. Alan Logue, our National CoConvener, brought his Indy-Trailer to park beside our stall. Thanks also to Sheena Stephen and Neil Querns-Anderson who stayed in George Square looking after the stall while the rest of us were away on the march. 

Speakers included First Minister Humza Yousaf, Iona Soper, James Robertson, Jane McAllister, Pat Kane. Other celebrities who turned out included Martin Compston. Marlene Halliday, our esteemed National Treasurer, made a rousing and informative speech on behalf of Pensioners for Indy. She also got to walk along next to Martin Compston at the head of the March!

End Pensioner Poverty. Pensioners for Indy

We were joined by pro-Gaza marchers who chanted “Freedom for Palestine; Freedom for Scotland; Freedom for Everyone.” 

Our flags and T-shirts and Morag Simpson’s delicious fruit cakes flew off the Glasgow Pensioners for Indy stall. I sold a copy of my novel “Two Closes and a Referendum” and with donations we made £188.60.

Onward and Upward. There are at least a dozen more pro-indy marches planned for 2024 with the first (under the auspices of All Under One Banner) being again in Glasgow in a fortnight’s time, on May 4th.

Unfortunately the recording didn’t pick up Mary’s vote of thanks but it did get her very final words of the day. Let’s not forget them.

If you’d like to know more about how the thinking behind putting on this rally and what its aims are, have a look at our blog post Pensioners on the March!

Our Article In the National

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The article was published in the National on 28 May. We were asked to contribute to the series which they are running just now highlighting the groups who have received grants from the Scottish Independence Foundation.

Here’s the text of the article which was written by Alan Logue co-Convenor of our National Group.

Our age group had the highest proportion of those who rejected constitutional change in 2014. We reformed Pensioners for Independence in early 2017 because we considered that a group run by pensioners was better placed to put our message across, raise the issues that most concern us – especially those that failed to convince us to vote Yes in 2014 – and convince our peers of the benefits of constitutional change.

Edinburgh was the first group to be convened and after some months Greater Glasgow followed and some activities started in Aberdeen and Perth. Street stalls were run, speakers were arranged and local meetings held.

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Possible New P4Indy Groups in Fife and in the Borders

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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.

And it looks like we will soon have a local group based in Fife!

Kirkcaldy Collage By Kilnburn and Duncan Cumming – Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

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.

After Fife, it’s possibly that the next new group will be in the Borders. We have a meeting set up with supporters in Selkirk.

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.