by Aileen Orr, Scottish Independence Convention Vice-Convenor and SNP Candidate for Dumfriesshire
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. It all started the day we heard of border guards and grannies in Manchester weeping for their lost families in Coatbridge or Bellshill. The trouble with the Unionist line is that it’s a poor attempt to put fear and loathing into the masses. But it almost worked.
The fact that they thought the people would believe them is bad enough but to expect to close down the Independence cause would confirm that the line between stupidity and arrogance is a very thin one.
It was a cruel plot and the fact the Unionist press would not print the self-satisfied leaked memos proclaiming that the target audience for this “were very unlikely to have crossed any border in their lives” indicated the crooked disdain for their own people as well as the people of Scotland. So the supposition was that Scots were either too stupid or too unworldly to know any better, or, worse, that their own members would not protest because they would digest the diet they were being fed, spitting nothing out. This message was also fed to intelligent media hacks who actually started to line up potential grannies for interviews to back up their claims. You could not make this up.
So why are the Unionist parties so afraid of Independence? Well, there is the very important point of not having a job in politics when it happens. The merging of Westminster and Scottish Parliamentarians would be a substantial loss to them. Or a possible loss of control of the people they used to dominate. There is no doubt that keeping people in poverty and perceived ignorance may have worked in the past, but everyone wants a bite at the pie now. There is also the possibility this Independence lark might just work and we know there are Unionist waverers.
The business plan is complete, all the figures checked, all the legal jargon and cross compliance verified, the shame of it is we now have to await the bankers approval. Maybe lining pockets is the answer for some but we have to start as we mean to go on and this means a clean slate, moving away from those who endorse corruption. Those ways are now the old ways. Subservience may seem cute if its the antics of a hungry cat but it does nothing to bolster the pride of a nation of people who are more than able to look after their own country.
We were, in the past, encouraged to leave all our affairs in the hands of grown ups who really did know what they were doing. Meanwhile our assets were being stripped, loaded on lorries, and sent South, including moving 6,000 square miles of Scottish fishing grounds to English waters; a back room deal in a smoke-filled room and in a stroke it was gone. This was done as we watched while our own people in Scotland continued to vote for them.
But the tide is turning, as are heads. We now have a media who can hide no longer. Around the world the people have taken up their opportunities on the World Wide Web and are starting, and finishing, revolutions from keyboards in attics. They are proving that independence of the mind is often the first step to the Independence of a Nation.
Published with thanks to the Scottish Independence Convention{jcomments on}