Midnight in the Drumochter Pass and we saw a meteor flashing across the skies above us. It felt like a good omen
20 YEARS ON KEY CAMPAIGNERS FROM 1997 RECALL THE REFERENDUM AND ANALYSE WHAT CAME NEXT
ACCLAIMED author and journalist Neal Ascherson helped launch the Bus Party in 1997 when writers, artists and musicians toured the country campaigning for a Yes vote in the devolution referendum. Here are his memories of that period.
IT was midnight, at the top of the Drumochter Pass.
We stopped the minibus and climbed out into the darkness, scented with invisible heather and bog myrtle, to look up at the sky.
It was uncannily clear, the Milky Way lying like a silver fleece across the northwest.
As we stared, a brilliant meteor flashed out of the constellations and slid towards the Pole. We sensed a good omen. The Bus Party was making an overnight run from Inverness to our next date at Biggar in the early morning.
But this was no conventional effort.
We were a travelling conversation and ceilidh, haring round the land to listen and learn as well as to speak and entertain.
Why? The menace of dire, routine Scottish campaigning had begun to emerge.
The same old faces were preparing to squabble about the same old petty conundrums – the people would watch with gloomy scepticism as the politicians rattled on about the tartan tax, the West Lothian Question, local government sleaze and the business rate.
There was a danger Scots would be so alienated by this debate they wouldn’t vote, or return a lukewarm, indecisive verdict that – as in 1979 – devolution would be stillborn.
So the Bus Party was dreamed up.
An old man in Inverness said: “Never again will this chance come. Your fathers and grandfathers look down at you”, and I heard indrawn breath all around me.
“Let politics look after itself – this is a moral and a spiritual decision”, and the sober citizenry broke into applause.
But there was fun, too. There was the Arbroath schoolboy who said: “I want the parliament to help wee-bitty Third World companies to compete wi’ multinationals. And mair flags!”
There was the couple from the Home Counties visiting Forres: “Good luck to you. But mind you don’t get a rotten government like we’ve had in England for the last 20 years!”
There was the man in Aberdeen’s St Machar’s Cathedral who shouted: “Comparing Scots to sheep is an insult to sheep. Sheep don’t have the vote, and if they did they wouldn’t vote for mutton pie!”
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 Hi l l 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.