Our Article In the National

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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Selkirk & District Group Are Up and Running!

And we’re off – Pensioners for Independence has a new group! We’re mostly based in or around Selkirk. So although anyone sharing our TD postcode is welcome to join, we’ve called ourselves ‘Selkirk and District’ rather than ‘Borders’ because folk in other Borders towns might want to set up their own group. We’re now up to 29 members, which is encouraging.

The June 1st AUOB march in Galashiels was a great start, and the first outing for our new banner (thank you Dumfries &Galloway – we liked yours so much, we used the same design!) Such a positive, friendly, inclusive atmosphere. It felt good to be among like-minded people of all ages, and to make links with our P4Indy neighbours – and buy some delicious cake from the P4Indy stall. It was very heartening to see support from local shopkeepers and bystanders – it’s starting to look like the tide is turning.

Future plans include a regular stall alongside the monthly Farmer’s Market, and inviting speakers. Some of us are looking forward to taking part in a Reframing workshop. 

Possible New P4Indy Groups in Fife and in the Borders

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.