AT four o’clock in the morning, bleary-eyed and exhausted, Ann Ballinger pulled over in an empty suburban street outside Glasgow. While the world was asleep, Ann sat in her car under orange street lights knowing that she was stretching herself to breaking point.

It was 2014, and Ann was on a marathon journey to Campbeltown and back where she had been speaking to a local group about independence. “I had to take a step-back for my own sanity,” she says. “I could have been out every day and night doing something … I was worried that if I didn’t do everything I could we would fail.

“I was a cog in the wheel but it was as important then as it is now that every cog does their very best. It [independence] is too important for everyone, so we have to do our best.”

READ MORE: An independent Scotland CAN stand on its own two feet

Ann, a retired teacher and trade unionist, is a dogged campaigner with the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) and for Scottish independence. She says: “When I retired in 2013 I had all this time on my hands. I had built up all these skills and knowledge over my life and needed to put it to use. So I started campaigning, and I haven’t stopped.”

For Ann, self-determination is the natural order for any nation: “A country ruling itself is basic common sense. The more you learn in life, the more you realise that any country has to be in control of its own destiny. I do some work with a clothes bank, and the people involved in these schemes, as well as food banks, do great work, but they shouldn’t have to. We deserve better.”

Before us is a choice and with that an opportunity to set ourselves on a path towards a better future. For the majority of Scots, Ann included, that means the removal of nuclear weapons from Faslane.

Ann says: “Last year, Peace Education Scotland invited Masashi Ieshima, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, to talk about his experiences. Worryingly, what happened then is still devastating lives today. We need to learn the lessons of the past.

“We took him to Loch Lomond, a place he had always dreamed of visiting – he was so happy. He told us how beautiful Scotland was and how lucky we were.”

As Ann recounts this story her face lights up, but her eyes are beginning to fill. The emotion is intense, lasting and potent.

She said: “If there was a significant accident at Faslane the entire central belt of Scotland would be wiped out and the effects of radiation would be felt as far north as Aberdeen. Removing Trident from Scotland is a step towards nuclear disarmament. The Scottish Government is very supportive but doesn’t have the power … we need that power.”

It is clear that what drives Ann’s desire and fight is that she cares deeply about making Scotland a better place. “I have three kids and three grandchildren,” she says. “I want them to grow up and flourish in a peaceful and fair society where there is no poverty or discrimination.

“I know this is difficult to achieve, but independence is truly a step in the right direction. How can someone in London know what’s best for Scotland? Scotland knows what’s best for Scotland.”

          The National:

The strains of campaigning in 2014 took its toll, the weight of individual responsibility being a sign of close attachment to the cause, but the new campaign for independence is a different debate, in a different time, set in a different political landscape.

“The legacy of 2014 is that people are much more aware, informed and engaged. Hopefully people will be making an active decision about the future they want, not falling back on the status quo. If we want independence, we need to show what we’re capable of and what an independent Scotland will look like. We need to campaign now and get over our differences.”

Political differences were a part of growing up for Ann, with a communist miner father and mother who was brought up in a strict Brethren household, her parents’ love for each other belied their politics. Ann jokes: “They met when dad had just finished his national service in the Merchant Navy, so maybe mum had something for a man in uniform.”

It may have been this upbringing which has instilled a sense of openness in Ann’s approach to campaigning. “We need to talk, she says. “We need to talk and think about what we want our country to look like, what steps we need to take to get there, how this fits in with people’s lives and where we get the experience to make all this happen.”

It is by coming together, talking and deciding our collective future that we can discover the latent potential that arrives through the confidence gained from self-determination.

Like many other supporters of independence, Ann sees great opportunity within our grasp, not just on single (yet major) issues like Trident, but for all of society.

“I’m reminded of something I think Billy Connolly said and Jimmy Reid used in a speech regarding the social housing of the 1960s being like ‘deserts wi’ windaes’,” she says. “Inside all those high flats were thousands of people. Those people had the potential to be whoever they wanted to be; doctors, lawyers, scientists … but they weren’t given the opportunity to succeed. Are we really going to let this happen again?”