HAVE A BANANA – six bob a pun’ 

I don’t know anyone who ever met Matt McGinn, but I know thousands who wish they had; I know many others who could have been Matt McGinn, and hundreds who were. I remember a radiogram in a caravan in the late 1960s and an album of songs the likes of which the world never heard before, or since – ‘Oh, take me back to the jungle, let me swing on the trees, away from the rattle and the rumble, I just want to be free.’ I learned only recently that Matt McGinn was an Oxford graduate; his time at an approved school was known, but somehow his academic achievements had passed me by. 

I haven’t been too hot on Glasgow’s geography either; there were notorious, infamous names, numbers, statistics, newspaper headlines – all could tell a tale of a human landscape, side splitting and heart breaking simultaneously, but 70s Glasgow was as exciting as it was scary to a wee teuchter like me – an unforgettable trip by train to the pantomime at the Kings, our wonderment at the Krazy House, double decker buses, women in high heels, mini skirts and leopard skin jackets, painted nails and perfume; men in Harringtons, or Crombie coats and sights commonplace to the locals which to a visitor aged nine with heather hanging out her ears were jaw droppers. Men in platform shoes,winkle pickers, Jesus sandals, with embroidered bellbottom jeans, spivvy, cool as get out or rough as a badger’s arse and bearded boys with guitars and pouches of Golden Virginia belting it out like Frankie Miller as their pals across the street blasted on the pipes. And there was The Barras. Glasgow was cosmopolitan, hopeful, gallus and depressing in equal measures. 

I didn’t get to meet Jimmy Reid either, but I did see him on the telly, in black and white. I was mesmerised. His words echo in my mind often. There was a man, hailed worldwide, recognised for his insight, understanding and foresight. Yet, there is still a rat race. Still we say that we are not rats. Perhaps Jimmy was wrong there. 

And I have walked along shabby streets in dismal Scottish towns, in the quiet rain, looking up at windows, wondering who was on the other side of that glass and what hopes, pains, fears and prospects those girls and boys had, or had not. I’ve paid pound notes to children in the Eastern villages of Stirling so they would guard my car as my German Scottish friend with roots in Culloden tied optimistic SNP posters high upon tired lamp posts. We should have been free in 93. 

I’ve never been to Eton, Oxford or Cambridge. The closest I will ever come to Panama is a squashed straw hat it is my wont to wear when acting the goat. I’ve family who didn’t see a banana until it was a prized, raw, green acquisition, carefully tended in a cloth in a dark drawer until ready to eat, in small slices, shared and savoured when ration books were the order of the day, but only for the working classes. Those of the higher echelons were privileged to consume, or to waste, wholesome and hearty meals when the masses starved, eked out or made do. Dough balls and Scotch broth. Plus ca change. 

Matt McGinn was a Calton man. He died aged 50. I don’t expect he survived until then on a diet of fresh fruit, caviar, pink champagne, Daiquiris and lobster. His will not have been the white linen cloth covered and crystal bedecked table of the toff with his acres overlooked by the paps of Jura as he whiffed and savoured a prized, aged malt, pondering a call to his man across the ocean to check on his double dealing and shifty moves. 

Jimmy Reid was Govan, that place where thousands of men grafted in shipyards which would disappear if we voted YES, just up the road from the steelyards destined to be similarly consigned to history by Independence Day. Steel in Scotland today however survives by dint of Scottish mettle and not as the result of the warm glow of the boundless love burbling from the cauldrons of Westminster. 

And Ravenscraig; its demise kindled justified hatred of Margaret Thatcher. Her policies and those of the posh Tory boys and girls who preceded and followed her are the reason why life expectancy in parts of Glasgow has been for decades lower than Middle Eastern war zones. For Matt McGinn and his cohorts there was no mystery as to why they would spend their wages in pubs and bookies. These men who sang along with Matt’s choruses were without aspiration, trammelled and trapped as they were, by their alleged betters, just a few short years after the tanks had rolled into George Square, sent to remind their ancestors whose hands push and pull the levers of power. 

I spoke of bananas – they are one of Panama’s mainstays; my geography teacher, Willie Nicol, told me so forty years ago. He wasn’t quite as familiar with Panama as is our Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, she who is tasked by our strong and stable PM to review our human rights once we reach the exit with Brexit.  Bananas aren’t written of in Ms Rudd’s portfolio, in her dad’s Panama Papers or the papers on the British Virgin Isles. Those millions of lines of numbers and names tell us instead that half of the money in the world moves through offshore accounts, unseen and untracked, safe, cleaned, laundered money. Quite as we expected, Britannia waives the rules more than most. Every penny and cent so hidden is a ghostly theft from the dreams of a child of this land; theft of a few moments of hope which might enhance and change a life. That accounting cleverness robs the youth of this nation; it steals away the ability to be nourished, to learn, to survive, to prosper. It is an imperial vagabond lurking quietly and unseen, in shadows, plotting a continued, privileged existence, beyond the reaches of the law and devoid of morality. Its consignation to the dungheap and dungeon of history is long overdue. 

In absolute contrast to the fetid, murderous grasp of those claws of privilege and power, our YES campaign breathed life into a nation ; YES 2014 energised Scotland; we sought and demanded answers, explanations, strategies. Our nation awoke. Debates and heated arguments across this land featured schoolchildren and pensioners disputing lofty matters of currency union, banking arrangements, lenders of last resort, the impact of changing oil prices, the reasons for the absence of and the justification and need for an oil fund. That unity, collective education, thirst for knowledge, that desire and demand for change comprise an overwhelming tide whose waves have never ceased to lap.  

So tonight, as I ponder bananas and Caribbean pirates, and self-educated, talented, optimistic men of Scotland, I think too of other days in Glasgow. There are tears in my eyes; a lump in my throat. 

I stood in Freedom Square with optimistic friends; we sang Caledonia and Loch Lomond, and of Wallace’s spirit Coming Home; we laughed, hoped and prayed. We had painted faces, banners, stalls, t-shirts, posters, flags. We danced. We believed. We went on to know, survive and overcome despair; and we have now rededicated ourselves to a democratic cause.  

Despite The Vow and the forked tongue which spoke of the closest thing to Home Rule and Devo Max, promises delivered by those who, clad in ermine, fill their bellies at our expense, there remains the ability to sit offshore on Scotland’s oil rigs and gaze inland to foodbanks, to glance upon the twinkling street lights which illuminate thousands of children and pensioners in poverty, hunger and cold, with empty cupboards and bellies and dreams as yet unfulfilled. There can be no doubt that with Brexit those cupboards will remain bare and horizons gloomy. 

So now Scotland must speak a new version of those old words which we have repeated often – we fight, struggle, argue for, contend and demand fairness, equality and justice; not glory, honour or riches, but freedom; that power to determine our priorities, our destiny; we cherish our bairns, not their bombs.  We seek a country where our children linger no longer in poverty-stricken shadows, where doors which were once closed, like minds, have become open, to all;  Scotland is and will be ours – we were a nation for a thousand years before that Union, and you mark my words, and his, Scotland will be an independent nation again.