RefeReNduM ANd ANAlySe whAT CAMe NexT
A girl from Biggar told me: “I don’t feel put down because I’m Scottish. The English and the Scots put each other down in a perfectly normal way.”
We met English families from the RAF base at Kinloss who were happily preparing to vote ‘Yes’.
At midnight on the Wednesday before the vote, we returned to our startingplace, Calton Hill in Edinburgh, where the empty parliament building waited.
The Vigil veterans, who had squatted at the gate for 1979 days to demand a Scottish Parliament, greeted us.
Then William McIlvanney recited the ancient lament for King Alexander III, one of this small country’s many lost leaders: “Succour Scotland and remede/That stayed is in perplexitie”.
And quietly, without trumpets, Referendum Day began.
The music of that 1997 referendum took a long time to die down.
A few months later, when Parliament was meeting, I saw Will Storrar (our Bus Party captain) in the gallery near me. MSPs were droning on about motions and amendments as if they had been doing it all their lives.
I caught Will’s eye, and we shook hands long and tightly. We did it! We did it !
Has Parliament lived up to what we hoped ? Not quite.
We wanted the opposite of Westminster: a place where the elected members cooperated rather than confronted.
In the powerful committees, MSPs often forget to be party enemies.
But First Minister’s Questions can be silly, un-Scottish charades of pumped-up rudeness.
Parliament must be open to all, inviting all citizens to participate in lawmaking.
I’d like to see the First Minister make an annual state-of-democracy speech, to report on progress towards those four goals.
My verdict on the first 20 years – good, but must do much better.