Tide turning for Scottish bravehearts disillusioned with Westminster
WHEN I bumped into Newstalk broadcaster, Henry McKean, in Dublin in July I told him that I was hoping to talk to him about the upcoming independence referendum for the article you have just started to read. Though he was born in England and has spent much of his life here in Ireland, McKean considers himself a Scot. His father is Scottish and he spent four pre-teenage years in Glasgow.
“There’s no way they’ll go for it,” he said to me that day. “They’re a bunch of wimps.”
Two weeks before the referendum on September 18, I call him for the interview. He is about to board a train to Edinburgh to spend a few days interviewing soon-to-be voters about the referendum. His tune has changed considerably.
“I can’t get over the amount of ‘yes’ support,” he says. “That’s been the big surprise for me. Ok I know it’s only anecdotal but the amount of people who’ve said to me that they realise it is risky but that it has to be done. Very few people I’ve spoken to have said ‘no’ and interestingly it seems to be the young people who are saying it more.”
McKean has spent the last 24 hours in his former home city and says the “poverty is horrific”. At 72.6 Glasgow has the lowest average life expectancy for men in the whole of the UK.
“If you look around Glasgow you can see that there used to be wealth, parts of it are beautiful,” says McKean. “But that wealth was 100 years ago. Now it’s just unemployment, misery and depression. There’s a lot of suicide among men and they’re drinking and taking drugs and there isn’t much for them to do. But now there’s a chance to be their own bosses and not have to listen to Westminster. There’s a feeling, certainly in Glasgow, that we can maybe look after our own affairs. Glasgow is definitely going to give a yes.”
Though Glasgow might well be a shoe-in, the capital is a different prospect. As McKean points out there is a “large English community in Edinburgh” and “there are lots of businesses there that look south”.
Television producer, Scott Fairweather, spent a year in the Scottish capital before moving to Ireland in 1996. “There will probably be a bit of a social divide all right and that’s where you’ll get your Edinburgh and Glasgow division,” he says. “There’s always been this idea that Glasgow is a bit more lower class than Edinburgh. Edinburgh is where banking and finance and law is whereas Glasgow is full of workers. So you’re always going to have this divide. But your voters split doesn’t work on location alone. It’s conservatives and liberals and between young and old. Older people are more likely to vote ‘no’ and younger people will probably vote ‘yes’.”
The 43-year-old, who is co-owner of Big Red Engine Productions in Dublin, hails from Arbroath, a coastal town north east of Dundee which is noted for its fierce nationalism. The town was witness to Robert the Bruce’s Declaration of Independence in 1320, and it has been sending nationalist MPs to Westminster for the last 40 years, even when it wasn’t fashionable to do so. The result in his hometown has been a foregone conclusion since the referendum was announced in 2013 but how does he think the rest of the country will vote? “I was there about four weeks ago for two weeks with my daughter and we travelled the length and breadth of the country,” he says. “During the whole trip I think I saw one ‘no’ poster. There were hundreds of ‘yes’ posters; big 10-foot polystyrene cut outs saying ‘yes’ in people’s front gardens and all the rest. Now it could have been just where I was going but I was in cities, countryside, urban and rural and I saw an abundance of ‘yes’. Everyone I met was voting ‘yes’ too. I was at a party with about 30 or 40 people and there was one who was voting ‘no’.”
Fairweather feels the ‘yes’ side’s greatest campaigning tool is the ‘no’ campaign. What is being dubbed as ‘project fear’ by “punters and not political analysts” is playing into the hands of Alex Salmond and his followers.
“The only thing the ‘no’ camp can do is say ‘if you vote yes all these terrible things are going to happen to you’,” says Fairweather. “And it’s the worst possible strategy to use with a Scottish person because you’re basically saying to them ‘you can’t govern yourselves’.”
But one of Scotland’s most famous exports, JK Rowling disagrees. Earlier this summer she gave £1 million to the no campaign because she fears it is the poor that will ultimately lose out if Scotland goes it alone.
"I don't rely on one of the big employers talking about leaving the country. I don't rely on benefits any more. If our economy tanks because the oil's running out, my family will be OK," she wrote on Twitter. "That's not true for everyone who's being sold the idea that we'll be a fabulous hybrid between Norway and Saudi Arabia … a socialist utopia where the oil will flow forever."
Former TV3 presenter, Kirsteen O’Sullivan, has been following the campaign closely. The 34-year-old, who has spent much of the last six years in Ireland, is originally from Fife. Most of her family are in Scotland and they says the referendum “has really ignited a fierce passion”.
“From chatting to family and friends, those that will be voting yes say the major issue for them is the transfer of power from Westminster to Scotland so that Scottish people can make their own decisions,” she says. “Then there’s national pride and cultural identity. Like the Irish, the Scots are immensely patriotic and many people want to see the country celebrated for its own distinct cultures and traditions. For example, Gaelic is still spoken in the Highlands and Islands but it’s a dying language and Scottish people rightly want it to live on. I know a few people who haven’t quite made up their minds, some work for big multinational companies and they say they’re afraid of a change and the impact independence would have on Scotland’s relationship with England and Europe. There are quite a few undecided voters, so I think it will go down to the wire.”
If the polls are anything to go by, the strong lead held by the ‘no’ side has been eaten into considerably and momentum has swung towards the ‘yes’ campaign. Whether it has peaked too quickly and too early remains to be seen.
Two days after I speak to Henry McKean he sends me a text message from Scotland. It shows a picture of the Scottish Sun with a headline: “SPLITTING DISTANCE — Yes 3 points from Victory in poll surge.”
“Could be a shock result,” remarks Henry underneath.
Tomorrow week we will know the result but it will be years before we know the impact of the decision.
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