Scottish parliament vigil was held for five years after John Major election

Three quarters of Scottish votes had gone to parties which promised a devolved assembly in New Parliament House. Here it was within hours on April 10, hundreds gathered to protest at democratic dysfunction. The ballot box in Scotland had become utterly useless. No one knew what to do.

Eventually, assembled strangers agreed that extreme politics demanded an extreme response. That night they set up a 24 hour, seven days a week camp and called themselves “Democracy for Scotland”. People would sleep on the pavement around a brazier. With a rota system they would stay as long as it took, even if that meant waiting weeks for John Major’s government to begin electoral reform. In this way, the vigil for a Scottish parliament was born. It ran daily for the next five and half years.

It was an endurance test and people came and went. Even when the first cabin was installed it hardly took the edge off winter’s blast. There was, however, superb organisation, support from local people in the form of food, firewood and cash donations, but mostly two factors ensured survival. It was run by people who were more determined than even very determined people typically are, and crucially, it was non-party political.

Yet a pernicious belief remains that the vigil was a front for the SNP. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even a front for independence, for most of us saw, erroneously with hindsight, the division being between two parties rather than two countries. Nationalists were often prominent but no more so than Labour supporters like myself. It is easily forgotten that when Margaret Thatcher told the SNP, they could have independence once they had a majority of MPs, they had exactly three. The SNP marginalised themselves further by declining to join the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the body which published the bedrock report “A Claim of Right for Scotland”.

The vigil was like an open air college, such was the richness of debate between ourselves and enquiring visitors; good company and good manners made the two hour shifts fly. There were regular stunts like Pat Kane reading our Declaration of Calton Hill from outside St Giles, the destiny marches, tours with a mini vigil tent, (now in the National Museum for Scotland) and costumed high jinks. For the most part, it was great fun.

Being a cross section of Scottish society, there were two LibDem councillors, many Greens, one lord (David Hamilton), one anarchist, one white witch, a retired doctor, a church minister, a bus driver, a “commando kilted” Normandy Beach veteran, artists, a shop owner, a BT engineer, students, a sprinkling of poets and many more.

As often as not, members did not belong to any political party. What united this audacious and eccentric campaign was winning a referendum for the Scottish people to decide if they wanted their own parliament. Possibly the only other common denominator was a love of Robert Burns. Thus, a visually incongruous sight on Regent Road became a national and ultimately international symbol of defiance.

At the General Election of 1997, the anti-democratic party was wiped out in Scotland. Not a single Tory MP remained. Nothing out of 72. None. I sometimes wonder if England had given the Conservatives a fifth term, would the political genius, Michael Forsyth, have continued to rule Scotland as Viceroy or Leader of the House of Lords?

The incoming Labour administration promised to uphold John Smith’s 1993 commitment to the “settled will of the people”. The vigil, its aim achieved, could have disbanded, but didn’t. Being canny and having begun 200 years after Thomas Muir and the Friends of the People, we could wait a little longer to see if a single or double or treble referendum actually took place. When the result came in on the Friday it showed that every part of Scotland had fully endorsed the principle of a Scottish parliament. By Sunday afternoon we were gone. In place of the famous cabin, a banner declared “missing you already”.

It boggles the mind that after 23 prosperous and progressive years, our devolved powers are being adulterated by a Prime Minister who in 2020 was secretly taped describing the Scottish Parliament as a “disaster”. Dominic Cummings, his furious former adviser, claims Johnson simply wants to close Holyrood. These threats add poignancy to the vigil’s 30th anniversary commemoration this Sunday. From 6-8pm veterans and friends will meet at the old camp and tour five associated sites before gathering at Democracy Cairn on Calton Hill where our beacon will be lit. Dennis Canavan is the first speaker. His son Mark was one of many who, in those dark days, proudly kept freedom’s flame burning. Come along.