With the kind of flair he is renowned for, Alex Salmond managed to move the Alba Party Conference from something of interest to members and political hacks, to one of the main items on every news bulletin, with his announcement that Ash Regan MSP had left the SNP and joined the Alba Party. This sent another shockwave through the SNP, who hot on the heels of losing Lisa Cameron MP to the Tories, have now lost someone who only recently ran for leadership of the party. To lose one is careless, to lose two must be concerning.
Not so, according to Humza Yousaf, who made himself look very small when he said that it was “no great loss” to the party. What exactly does that say to the general public? Any reasonable person must ask how many others have been elected who are “no great loss” either. Mr Yousaf’s soor grapes chimed with many SNP members who claimed to have heaved a collective sigh of relief now that this “agent provocateur was now gone, while others began sharpening their long knives as they seek to rid themselves of others who are dissatisfied with the direction of the party, such as Fergus Ewing.
A few weeks ago it was claimed that the SNP were losing voters who were switching to Labour, but it appears that committed independence supporters, such as Ash Regan aren’t being seduced by by Sir Keir’s menu of continued Brexit topped with the magic beans of your choice, but are switching to other independence parties, Alba being one. The old saying of “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” is uppermost in many of their minds, and it seems to concern no-one in the SNP that MPs, MSPs, Councillors, members and voters are all bailing out. When is it going to register that the SNP in its current state is rendering itself unelectable? Nothing seems to register anymore, and every defeat or injury is written off without thought.
The SNP as a collective, from top to bottom have now reached a point where they are acting like the fans of a once successful football team who are now facing a relegation dogfight, and either refuse to accept it can happen or are consoling themselves that they will soon be rid of all the under-achievers and hangers on. As a supporter of a team which has experienced relegation, the proverbial “season in the lower league” doesn’t always pay off and more often leads to an extended stay, a loss of fans and occasionally oblivion. The SNP are on the verge of taking Celtic and turning them into Albion Rovers. The season is not over though, and with many fixtures still to play they can turn things round. They need to accept that the new manager is a dud, and they need to change things now if they want to stop losing their best and brightest to the opposition. Otherwise it’s goodbye San Siro, hello San Giro…
Coverage in the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser of our protest outside NLC Headquarters, just on part of a successful grass-roots community campaign to save 39 community facilities are 110 jobs across North Lanarkshire.
I was the organiser of the protest which took place outside North Lanarkshire Council headquarters in Motherwell last week, and I would like to thank everyone who came along for their attendance. We were only a small part of a movement which spread the length and breadth of North Lanarkshire, and it was only thanks to the tens of thousands of people in the area getting active, signing petitions and pressurising local and national politicians, which caused NLC to u-turn and save our community facilities (it must be stressed that this is only a short term promise though).
After the protest I attended the council meeting which was scheduled to take place, to see the decision ratified, as up until that point it had not been. What became apparent during that meeting was that there had been significant behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on. The SNP group had called for a vote of no confidence in Leader of the Council Jim Logue, and on hearing why it had been called I could not disagree. The Policy & Strategy Committee of the council had voted for these cuts to go ahead by 13 votes to 12. It was not in Councillor Logue’s power to override this, so to announce this without giving the full council any say in the matter was completely and utterly wrong. When it was then revealed that Anas Sarwar, leader of the Labour Party group in Scotland, had let it slip to the press that an announcement was coming later that day, it became clear that these 39 unavoidable closures were not only completely avoidable, but they were politically toxic in the run up to a major by-election.
Our local politicians should bear in mind going forward, we are not political playthings, and they take on the people at their peril.
I couldn’t help but put my head in my hands and groan when I started to the see social media come alive with angry SNP members and groups demanding that Lisa Cameron immediately resign and trigger a by-election for jumping ship and defecting to the Tories, and by the time Humza Yousaf himself called on her to do “the honourable thing” I could almost hear the ‘Hypocrisy Bus’ reversing out of the garage.
In February 2023 the Scottish Government rejected a petition which would have made it a mandatory requirement for elected representatives to stand down in the event they no longer represented the party ticket they were elected on. Not one SNP MSP supported this, so we have to ask, if this is not good enough for Scotland’s parliament, why should we demand it of the Westminster one? Had the SNP supported such a move then I’d be at the head of the line demanding she resign, but they didn’t, and as such they will just have to suck it up and deal with the fallout.
The current bin-fire which engulfs the SNP is one of the most disheartening events we, as a broad church independence movement could bear witness to. The SNP, as the de-facto head of the Yes camp very nearly took us to victory in 2014. So to see this, the latest in a long line of self-inflicted disasters, does none of us any good. At every point in recent years where the SNP have had the chance to take the right path, they have gone up cul-de-sacs and taken wrong turns until they have become completely lost, to themselves and to the voters. They have suffered so many injuries that they now remind me of “The Black Knight” in Monty Python, and I can only imagine that at the next Westminster election their campaign slogan will along the lines of “we’ll bite your legs off”.
The party membership must take their fair share of the blame, but many appear to have adopted the same self-deluding attitude as the party leadership, having lost the ability to “see themselves as ithers see us”. Unless there is a serious change within the SNP in the immediate future then I am no doubt that the SNP will lose many seats at Westminster next year, and while that may be a personal disaster for the party, it will be a bitter blow to the wider Yes movement.
In 2014 there was one party with independence as it’s raison d’etre. Now there are at least another two, while others are independence supporting, such as the Greens and the Scottish Socialists. After the Rutherglen by-election, Labour made the claim that the SNP voters were deserting them to go to Labour. Committed independence supporters may be leaving the SNP, but there is no evidence they are going to Labour, indeed all evidence points to them moving to other independence parties, and very few go full on Lisa Cameron and jump to a British Nationalist extremist party.
I fear that without a change in leadership and direction from the SNP, in the short term, the campaign for Scottish independence will come to a halt. Should Labour win the next UK general election, there may from some quarters be a sigh of relief that the Tories are gone. All that will have been achieved in such a case is a brief respite in which we can await their return to government, but what will really change in the interim anyway? Labour are moving so far to the right to ape the Tories, that we may as well not bother in the first place. The only long term solution for Scotland is independence from the basket case UK. The SNP cannot be allowed to put that at risk. To any SNP member who will be attending your conference, the Yes movement reminds you: “Carpe Diem”. Make your voices heard and stop the rot now. Otherwise we all suffer for your actions.
Before yesterday’s full council meeting there was a protest held outside NLC HQ, against the 39 community facility closures which had been agreed by the NLC Policy and Strategy Committe. The following members voted for the closures:
Alan Beveridge (Airdrie North) Independent
Angella Campbell (Bellshill) Labour
Chris Costello (Airdrie Central) Labour
Kenny Duffy (Motherwell South East & Ravenscraig) Labour
Andrew Duffy-Lawson (Motherwell North) Labour
Tom Fisher (Cumbernauld North) Labour
Jim Logue (Airdrie Central) Labour
Helen Loughran (Thorniewood) Labour
Michael McBride (Airdrie South) Labour
Lorraine Nolan (Motherwell West) Conservative
Louise Roarty (Murdostoun) Labour
Sandy Watson (Airdrie South) Conservative
Geraldine Woods (Coatbridge South) Labour
Councillor Heather Brannan-McVey(Kilsyth) Labour abstained.
I had organised the protest at short notice and the text of my speech is below:
My name is Jim Cassidy and I called for this protest today when the news broke that our local swimming pool in Airdrie was one of the many facilities across North Lanarkshire which was to be closed down by North Lanarkshire Council.
I’ve never organised a protest rally before, so to have them back down before it was due to take place was amazing. I’ll need to organise them more often! Joking aside, the ruling group within the council only reversed their decision after pressure from individuals and groups from across our council area, groups like the Bellshill Sharks and the WKC Karate Club in Holytown, and from over 21,000 signatures on numerous petitions online, and from people contacting their councillors, MSPs and Mps directly.
A total of 39 locations which form the heart of our communities was to be ripped out, ranging from the larger facilities which serve the towns and surrounding areas, such as the Aquatec in Motherwell, and the John Smith Pool in Airdrie, to community libraries, and to smaller community centres in our villages. No part of North Lanarkshire was to be untouched, from Kilsyth in the North to Motherwell in the South, from Stepps in the West to Shotts in the East. The facilities available to the 340,000 residents were voted out of existence by just 13 councillors, with just ONE vote tipping the balance in favour of the destruction of facilities which they had been entrusted to protect!
This issue united people across North Lanarkshire in a way previously unseen. It didn’t matter who you voted for at the last election, whether you were Labour, SNP, Tory, Green or otherwise: every single one of us would be affected, and there was no positive to take from this for anyone. Who cares if you can turn round and try to put the blame on the opposition party, or Holyrood, or Westminster? What GOOD does that do? How does that HELP your community?
Our politicians, especially the ones who made this horrendous decision, were more than happy to play petty politics with OUR communities. Well, WE, THE PEOPLE of North Lanarkshire are here to tell you that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. You can no longer rip apart our communities, demolish our history and destroy our future and claim that “A BIG BOY DONE IT AND RAN AWAY”. That’s why those responsible are shamefully sneaking in the back door today, and we are standing here with our heads held high. Because we stood up for our communities when they didn’t.
Even after their decision they behaved in a manner which suggested that they were immune to criticism. Politicians like to tell us that “WE ARE LISTENING” when in reality they are putting their fingers in their ears and hoping we little people go away. North Lanarkshire Council blocked replies on social media. Councillors refused to respond to residents questions. Comments on certain Facebook Community groups were deleted if they tried to question the decision made by the committee or promote events such as this one. Well, they are listening now, aren’t they?
And they will still be listening when the next by-election is held, and when the next council election takes place in 2027. I am not going to tell you who to vote for, but I am going to ask that whatever happens you do two things:
GET OUT AND VOTE. In the 2022 Council elections turnout across North Lanarkshire was appalling low, in some wards as low as 37%. In the recent Bellshill by-election the turnout was just 22%! That’s pitiful. For anyone who thinks it’s just the “cooncil elections” and they don’t matter, it’s days like this that drives it home that they DO matter!
DEMAND BETTER FROM THE PEOPLE WE ELECT. Paying attention to their promises and manifestos is one thing, but as communities we not only need to scrutinise what they are offering, but we need to make our demands to them clear! We will not elect them to rip apart our communities. No, we elect them to protect them, and it should be made clear to them that among all the things their party wants they must include guarantuees for the things we want. We need to draw OUR red lines.
Now that we have their attention, one final message.
HANDS OFF OUR COMMUNITY FACILITIES. We are watching and what you tried to get away with today, you will not get away with tomorrow. We will not accept closures by the back door. We will not allow you to pick us off one by one, reducing opening hours here, cutting jobs there. That stops TODAY! NLC have for years reduced opening hours to the extent that our own community facilities become unusable, then they commission reports which say that “low footfall” is the reason for them closing! They created the low-footfall in the first place! Death by 1000 cuts stops NOW! If you can find the £5 million overnight to reverse these cuts, you can look a bit harder and do better.
An Independent Scotsman 