On 30th August 200 years ago James ‘Purlie’ Wilson was hanged and beheaded on Glasgow Green for High Treason. A rebellious crowd of 20,000, held back by soldiers, watched him die. He gave an impassioned speech on the gallows. Did the Press report on what he said? No.
Yesterday, had things been otherwise, I would have been up in Arbroath celebrating the 700th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. I’m sure that many of you would have been there too. And I’m sure that at some point we will be there enjoying a belated gathering.
In the meantime we have Lesley Riddoch & Charlie Stuart to thank for this film about the Declaration. And also to thank Patrick Doyle for the original score.
You can find out more about the making of the film in Lesley’s own blog post.
On Saturday 20,000 people (according to the organisers) or 10,000 people (according to the police) squeezed themselves into Glasgow’s George Square to listen to an array of speakers on the theme of Scottish Independence.
As is usual it was all videoed by the IndependenceLiveStreaming team and if you missed it, or couldn’t hear it, you can listen again now.
It was quite a line-up:
To help you find each of the speakers here are the timings in the video:
@ 18mins: Mhairi Black MP
@ 34mins: Maggie Chapman, Convenor of Scottish Independence Convention
@ 44mins: Valentina Servera Clavell from Catalonia
@ 1h 6mins: Patrick Harvie MSP, Scottish Greens
@ 1h 16mins: Paul Kavanagh of Wee Ginger Dug
@ 1h 26mins: Suzanne McLaughlin, Women for Independence
@ 1h 34mins: Janey Godley, Isa MacNamee and a’ the Sandras
@ 1h 42mins: Mike Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Government Business & Constitutional Relations
@ 1h 51mins: Humza Yusaf MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Justice,
@ 2h Nicola Sturgeon MSP, First Minister of Scotland
And look – Glasgow Pensioners for Indy were there too!
Glasgow P4Indy group invited John Drummond to their August meeting today to talk about a Scottish Constitution. John, along with Canon Kenyon Wright, was one of the founders of the Constitutional Commission, back in 2005. And on the Commission’s website you find these three principles underpinning how they have tried to progress the idea of a written constitution for Scotland:
The work of the Constitutional Commission starts from three axioms. Firstly, that legitimate sovereignty in Scotland resides in the “whole community of the realm”, and not in the Queen-in-Parliament at Westminster.
Secondly, that a written and entrenched Constitution, endorsed by the whole community, guaranteeing the rights of citizens, and delimiting the powers, duties and responsibilities of the institutions of State, is necessary in order to establish the right relationship between the State and the people in a liberal democracy.
Thirdly, that liberal democracy cannot exist merely in procedural terms, but must be sustained by civic, humane and democratic values.
you can find out more here: Constitutional Commission John is currently giving this talk to Indy supporting groups all over Scotland so if you’re interested, contact him via this website.
The video below is John giving the talk a few months back. It’s approximately what he said in Glasgow today. But because since this version from March 2019, the UK is in the grip of a constitutional crisis, we heard a lot more about the current attempts by Boris Johnson to prorogue Parliament and what that could presage for the Scottish independence movement.
The 16 March was that Saturday when Scotland was caught in a jetstream-powered downpour of rain, sleet and snow but 70 of us still made our way to our AGM in Edinburgh. We were very fortunate to have three speakers joining us: Edinburgh City Councillor Ashley Graczyk, Joanna Cherry QC MP, and Paul Kavanagh-Mosson with the Wee Ginger Dug.
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