IN these pandemic days, and with lockdown restrictions in place, the Yes movement has sensibly decided to dispense with marches and rallies and only hold static demonstrations.
Veteran stalwarts of the independence movement, Harry Bickerstaff and his wife Eileen, have come up with an idea that might yet be replicated in Yes groups across the country – a “friends” meeting.
Harry told The National: “Because of the British State’s obvious intention of minimising/ removing as many powers as possible from our Scottish Parliament, I decided to meet my friends at our Holyrood Parliament.
“My wife Eileen and myself can stand outside our Parliament and make our protest. That’s all. But at least, we’ve done the little bit we can.
“I then decided simply to tell folk who were my Facebook ‘friends’, what we proposed to do and invited any of them, who felt as we did, to take a trip up to the Parliament buildings and we could all meet up, or not.
“From that, someone suggested a date of Thursday August 27 and, since it wasn’t a fixed or organised sort of thing, we thought, ‘why not?’ “So, we are taking ourselves to the Scottish Parliament buildings on that day, Thursday August 27 and we will be hanging around the Parliament, from about 11am to 3pm . Nothing is planned – it’s just friends getting together.
“We will be observing social distancing and it would be handy if people brought flags or bunting that’s two metres in length for our meeting of friends, both old and new.”
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