The F word

On the second Saturday in July each year are held the Famous Alva Games, the last surviving Games and Sports in Clackmannanshire, started in 1845. In true Scottish tradition it’s either bucketing rain or the sun splits the skies. An international event with competitors and visitors from across the globe; athletics, Highland dancing, caber, shotput, hammer, cycling, visitors and children’s races, the shows, the skirls and drumbeats of our beloved Bowmar Pipe Band and topped off by the four hill races up Torry, from age 12 to the awe inspiring British Championship Hill Race. Each year a resounding success – due to the year round efforts of a dedicated committee and several local volunteers. A cause for celebration, recalling memories of days and friends gone by, fun and looking to the future with hope.

But if you were to climb the magnificent backdrop of the Ochil Hills and perhaps sit atop one of the many wind turbines there your gaze would fall upon a county where one in four children lives in poverty, where many single adults struggle on zero hours contracts, where the working poor depend on food banks, with charitable third sector organisations desperately supporting those in increasing need and looming dire straits. Where mums and dads will do without to give their children a little pocket money to go to the shows and buy a candy floss or a burger. Where grandmothers and aunties will shiver so as to be able to turn the cooker on to make a hot meal, or instead starve to afford a wee heat. Scotland in miniature is Clackmannanshire.

Those ills which plague Clackmannanshire are open sores on the corpse of Scotland; the worst drugs related deaths in Europe, every single soul unnecessarily lost causing immense unforgettable grief, sorrow and pain. Alcohol related deaths, death by suicide, infant mortality, life expectancy – all of these multiple times more prevalent in our most deprived than in our least deprived areas. 

We know that poverty kills. 

We know that poverty is the greatest most awful driver of inequality. Hungry children don’t learn and childhood want has permanent impact eroding life chances thereby reducing our country’s ability to thrive and prosper. 

We know that Scotland’s resources have for centuries bankrolled Westminster and continue so to do as the theft of our oil, our gas, our wind and wave power continues. 

We know that the billions spent on that abomination on the Clyde, on weapons of mass destruction, on illegal wars, would not be within the manifesto of the government of an independent Scotland.

We know that there is a majority within Scotland for our country’s independence, because independence is normal and that is the only means by which we will address poverty.

 With independence there will come the power to control all our resources and spend on priorities nominated by the people of Scotland, not imposed by a government we neither elected nor supported whose ambitions are not ours. 

Clackmannanshire has an SNP controlled council, an SNP MSP and an SNP MP. Despite the 2014 result, my home county supports independence and needs that with ever increasing urgency. 

Nearby in Fife, Dundee and Perthshire the political landscape is similar; the problems and fears of many remain the same. Colleagues of the ALBA Party equalities group are undertaking a series of events in Dunfermline on 20 July, Dundee on 27 July, Glenrothes on 1 August and Perth on 3 August – then, in common with friends from other parties and organisations we will listen to audiences of Scots worried about housing and energy costs, food bills, health issues, all the everyday matters which trouble individuals, parents, carers, friends and neighbours. 

We will explain as Kenny MacAskill has said this week, in a Westminster debate on tax, that this is about the type of society you want – we must not take from the poor and give to the rich; we cannot impoverish our young future generations. We must avoid the mistakes of the 1980s and create the opportunity to build a better society.

We saw this week the ONS cost of living survey report that one in 20 adults run out of food, unable to buy any more at some point in the last two weeks; half of adults report buying less when food shopping; one in 10 parents living with a baby or toddler reports having run out of food as does one in 7 renters. This is the price of remaining in the Union.

ALBA’s plans to alleviate pressures faced across the country include increasing the Scottish child payment to £40 per child per week, extending free school meals to all primary and secondary pupils in Scotland and introducing universal access to sports facilities for all under 18. We favour a progressive tax system including a windfall tax and a luxury goods tax. We believe that an independent Scotland should be a democratic republic where citizens have rights embodied in a written constitution.

The values of the Alba party are shared by many friends within the independence movement; feedback at our national assemblies, from 59 Wee ALBA Book events, from speeches at All Under One Banner, Hope Over Fear and Yestival, we know that those who support Scottish independence see that the momentum is with our movement, that the only way to achieve the electoral mandate authorising the commencement of negotiations on the terms of the independence settlement is by harnessing the power of Scotland United.

Gone for now should be the days of narrow partisan politicking in Scotland. Those who insist that one party has a monopoly on the power to shape the destiny and the future of the people of this country, born and yet to be, have no moral place so to do if the aim is the freedom our nation needs.

We know that a majority of Scottish seats in a Westminster election can be gained on little over 30% of the popular vote – successive Tory governments have paid scant attention and instead been derisory about Scotland’s views, needs and demands. 56 SNP MPs did not a referendum make, nor did 35 or 40 odds. The success of a country and of a national campaign for self-determination cannot be secondary to the promotion of one party, especially not where that party has a record of settling down, not up.

We know that a majority of seats and a majority of the popular vote give international credibility.

Those in my home town and beyond throughout Scotland who are hungry and afraid, skint, unwell or plain scunnered deserve to see a national convention of politicians and civic Scotland driven by a determination to secure our country’s freedom. That in tandem with Scotland United where independence supporting parties agree one candidate per constituency to maximise the independence vote will not only make us all in this movement stronger for Scotland but Scotland will speak with one voice loudly and clearly to the world.

In other words, Scotland United will never be defeated.