The Event:

Greater Glasgow P4Indy Group invited Dave Thompson former MSP and now one of the founders of the Alliance for Independence (AFI) to contribute to a recent virtual meeting. Alan Logue, convenor of the group, stated at the outset that Pensioners for Indy are a non-party political organisation and do not endorse any party. The invitation to Dave is to better inform our members about the AFI initiative, its possible benefits and its possible risks.

Thirty nine people logged into the event. Dave spoke for about 20mins and there followed a lively Q&A sessions with points being made on both the pros and the cons of having List-Only Indy supporting parties.

The questions covered a lot of ground:

• With SNP we know what we getting, they have a manifesto, same with the Greens. You say that AFI will not have a manifesto. That may be OK to get us to independence but those AFI MSPs will still be in Holyrood afterwards and we have no way of knowing what they would vote. Presumably individual MSPs will just vote according to their own views?
• What are electoral Commission saying about accepting AFI
• How likely is it that small parties are going to join in with you?
• What if SNP don’t do as well as polls are saying, are we not in danger of making things worse rather than better?
• If Greens don’t join AFI is it still viable?
• How is it going to be funded? If people vote for you, won’t this be lauded by Unionists as SNP losing their power? And then be used it to make negotiations much more difficult?
• Where SNP are likely to win a list seat, would you stand a candidate or step aside?
• Coalitions are normal in a lot of countries, why on earth don’t you have a manifesto now that you can promote in phase two after independence?
• D’Hondt system works well in producing a parliament which reflects how we vote. If this initiative ends up with a less proportional parliament is that really a good thing? Some people are concerned with the ethics of that. And wouldn’t a less proportional result it be used to argue against the legitimacy of the parliament?
• There is no certainty that SNP will get the majority of the seats. As happened in 2016 when SNP got fewer votes. Why risk that again? Is it not a dangerous thing to do?

You can listen to the talk here:

It’s been four months since Glasgow P4Indy folk have done any street campaigning. We’ve had online meetings. We’ve had some really good speakers. And we’ve had more people coming to the line meetings than come to our usual monthly meetings in Glasgow city centre.

That all changed a day or so ago ….

Two of our group, Sheena Stephens and Mary McCabe, checked the coronavirus advice (and the weather forecast) and decided that it was OK to get outside and set up some of of our new banners. They tied them to the railings at Alexandra Park. And they set up a wee table with some leaflets. Mary and Sheena kept to the two metre distancing between themselves and any interested passers-by. But that still let them have some good conversations about where Scotland is now with respect to independence. Since then Sheena and Anna have taken a couple of the banners out to Milngavie and restarted our campaigning there – thanks, you two!

I set up a zoom meeting with Mary and Sheena so that I could ask them more about where the banners came from and how the outing went. Val Gauld, another Glasgow P4Indy member, joined us.

You can listen here. Just a heads up, Mary’s audio was playing up. I had to edit some of it out and insert me saying what she’d said. 🥴 We’ll need to get that sorted for next time.

One of our group put the photos on Twitter and on the P4Indy Facebook page. Now we learn that over 14,000 people have seen the tweet. Good to know that people are picking up on P4Indy activism and also that there seems to be an appetite to get out on the streets again. In a safe way, of course.

You can find out more about Grassroots Oban’s Banner Library And here are some of the banner designs in their collection. Use the < and > arrows to move through the slides or click on the thumbnails:

Dr Elspeth King is a Scottish curator, writer and social historian. She is known for her role as curator of social history at the People’s Palace Museum in Glasgow, as Director the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, and for her scholarship on the Scottish Suffrage movement.

She studied Medieval History at University of St Andrews. One of the reasons she chose that topic was because Scottish History was not a recognised topic which counted towards a degree. It was said to be too pariochial. You could only study it as a special subject in second year, there was no set eading list, you had to discover your own.

Recently she joined an online meeting of Glasgow P4Indy and talked about the importance of teaching and learning your country’s history. As she says in the talk:

It’s my belief those who know and write about the past can understand the present and shape the future.

And I  know myself that the Scottish cause of independence has been held back by failure to teach Scottish history, literature & language in our schools. We have long suffered from what is known as internal  colonialism and the well documented Scottish cringe whereby all our culture is regarded as  inferior to our bigger southern neighbour.

You can listen to her talk and the Q&A afterwards here:

In 1974, King joined the People’s Palace, in Glasgow as a curator, where she remained for the next 16 years. During her tenure exhibitions such as Scotland Sober and Free, the 150th anniversary of the Temperance Movement, and Michael Donnelly’s 1981 exhibition of stained glass, gained record attendances.^[2] The People’s Palace won European Museum of the Year in 1981 and the British Museum of the Year award in 1983.^[3]

King left Glasgow to take on the role of director of the Dunfermline Heritage Trust^[5][7], where she helped to oversee the restoration as a heritage centre of Abbot House,^[8] the oldest secular building in the town.^[9] Then 1994, she joined the Smith Art Gallery Museum in Stirling as its first Director, where she remained until her retirement in August 2018.^[7] 

Some years back the BBC interviewed Elspeth on Good Morning Scotland. You can listen to that here: