Stephen McDonald had always swallowed the “too wee, too poor” line about Scottish independence. But on the eve of the referendum, an unexpected source prompted a change of heart.
I WASN’T always pro-independence. Until 2014 I really had no time for politics. If I was asked about my affiliation back then I was LibDem most of the time but had voted Labour a few times and had, to my eternal shame, even voted Conservative in a local election once.
I was like many people with no real understanding of what being part of the UK actually meant.
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In February 2014, I was working in London for one of the UK’s main broadcasters from Monday to Friday and coming back to Glasgow every weekend. While there I actually felt that I was having a “best of both worlds” experience where I was able to enjoy the pace and choice of work available in London while being able to come home to Scotland at weekends and enjoy downtime with my family. I saw no reason why we should change anything. Colleagues would ask me what I thought about Scotland choosing independence and my response was “I see no reason to change things”.
Bizarrely, the thing that changed my mind was something that on the face of it is unrelated to politics.
One night, after work, I went back to my single room in a shared house in Chiswick and was watching the Brit awards. Kate Moss came on screen to accept a lifetime achievement award on behalf of David Bowie and as part of the acceptance speech, she said that David Bowie had asked her to say “Scotland, Don’t Leave Us”.
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It occurred to me that night that I had been hearing more and more of this in the last few months and it surprised me since, until then, I had always been bombarded with the propaganda that Scotland was a poor country and the “broad shoulders” of the UK keeping us propped up. I had never really questioned this as it was something I had grown up with and which I read and heard on all manner of news and publications.
I had swallowed the “too wee, too poor” message, hook, line and sinker. So this sudden “charm offensive” that I was seeing just didn’t ring true and it prompted me to make an effort to read as much as I could from both sides of the argument when I got home that weekend.
Well that was it. For the first time in my life, at the age of 50, I read as many articles and commentaries as I could with a view to making up my mind about independence. I tried as much as possible to be objective and, to be honest, I began with the belief that the UK could never be as bad as the independence cause was suggesting. But sure enough, after reading (and I don’t mean Twitter), I could see that the UK had been squandering Scotland’s resources and centralising these in the pet projects of successive Westminster governments.
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It was apparent that independence was the right thing for my children and for the broader population of Scotland.
I still do most of my work in London and south-east England and I still like it there and value and appreciate my colleagues from England and other countries. But nowadays many of them ask me why we didn’t grab independence when we could and a significant number suggest they’d like to move to Scotland when we are independent.
Independence is normal.
From No to Yes: Why do you want Scotland to be independent?
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