Craig Berry talks about the SNP Commonweal Group

Julia Laurie, convenor of Edinburgh & Lothians P4Indy group, writes:

This is from our first meeting of 2021, and the year has not started well, with bad weather, rising Covid numbers, not to mention the end of the Brexit transition period with the awful consequences for Scotland becoming immediately apparent. So it’s good to get together again with our local members..

One of our members suggested that we invite Craig Berry. P4Indy does not support any individual political party, but whether you are a member of the SNP or simply lend them your vote, we do need the party to achieve our goal, and certainly need to know of developments within the party. So I decided to ask Craig. He responded very quickly, quite delighted to have the opportunity to talk to us, and I am very glad he did, as it was a really enjoyable meeting. You can listen to it here:

Pensioners for Independence
Pensioners for Independence
Craig Berry: SNP Commonweal Group
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Background …

Craig started by telling us a little about himself, and how he came to set up the SNP Commonweal group. He is a fervent believer in the Common Weal think-tank aims and he wants to bring as many of these aims directly into the SNP, with the aim of trying to influence policy-making.

We had a great variety of questions from our members:

  • is there too much centralisation within the SNP,
  • are policies agreed at Conference by the members taken forward,
  • Do you think we can persuade the SNP to make the election in May a plebiscite?
  • How do you endeavour to engage with SNP policies?
  • What do you think of the Salmond/Neal recovery plan?
  • how we can influence the party,  which made the meeting very interesting, and indeed fun.

Overall, it was a very good meeting, and our members who were able to join, really enjoyed it. Craig comes over as a forward looking, passionate young activist, and boy, do we need plenty of them! I do hope you enjoyed listening to this recording.

At our next meeting….

… to be held on Tuesday the 9th February, we have Dr Kirsty Hughes, Director and Founder of the Scottish Centre on European Relations speaking to us. She has published extensively, including books, reports, and policy papers, as well as contributing to a wide range of national and international media outlets. Her research focus has included: the UK, Scotland and Brexit, EU democracy, the politics of the Eurozone crisis, the EU enlargement to central and eastern Europe, and Turkey’s EU accession process. Kirsty spoke to us in November of 2019, and much has changed since then, so we are very much looking forward to this meeting.

#EverythingMustChange

CommonWeal are starting a ReBuild initiative to address how we move forward post-coronavirus.

Here Mary McCabe tells us her thoughts on the subject:

There are two schools of thought about the world post Covid-19.

One: Plans to overhaul the system or to reform the constitution are navel-gazing. We must get back to where we were before considering radical change. If we ever do…

The Other: The place we were before, with the UK Government sacrificing Health and Social Care in England on the altar of profit, prioritising jingoistic wars over the war on poverty and ignoring the suggestions of the Scottish Government to take a different route was how we got in this mess. 

We must find a new way.

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