A Push for Scotland ‘to Stand on Its Own’
Reportage dans une ville écossaise.
A Paisley, une ville de 76 000 habitants proche de Glasgow, on a majoritairement voté pour l’indépendance lors du premier référendum organisé en 2014. Aujourd’hui, une journaliste est allée à la rencontre des habitants pour recueillir leur sentiment. Entre le Brexit et le prix du baril, on lit en filigrane l’histoire d’un peuple écossais longtemps méprisé par le pouvoir central. De là à voter l’indépendance…
PAISLEY, Scotland —Between a palatial Baptist church, Europe’s biggest, and a 12th-century abbey, there are five thrift stores, four pawnbrokers and a dozen boarded-up shop fronts. The McDonald’s is still open, but it just announced that it, too, is closing. In the middle distance: a 19th-century smokestack from which smoke never rises.
2.The main street of Paisley looks like that of any struggling, postindustrial town just south of the border with England. But while English workingclass cities like Sunderland and Stoke-on-Trent voted to leave the European Union, this Scottish town, best known for giving the teardrop pattern its name, voted to stay in the bloc — and to leave the United Kingdom.
3.“We don’t want to be ruled by another country anymore, we don’t want to be pulled out of Europe,”
said George McGrattan, 83, a retired factory worker. “It’s time for Scotland to stand on its own two feet.”
RIGHT OR LEFT?
4. The language of identity and nation resonates here as much as in the rest of working-class Britain, but the conversation is entirely different. Where England has veered right and English nationalism tends to be of the nostalgic kind, laced with anti-immigrant rhetoric, Scotland has veered left and embraced a civic-style nationalism, welcoming anyone who wants to live and work in the country.
5.There is enough immigration in Paisley to support a Polish section in the public library and at least one Polish grocery store. The manager, Marcin Sutkowski, plans to vote for Scottish independence — not least because he fears for his right to stay after Britain has left the European Union. “We are scared of Brexit,” he said, referring to the withdrawal. “Scottish people respect us.”
6.Sutkowski, 28, talked about Polish immigrants in England and how the mood had changed since the vote to leave the European Union. Racist slurs have become more common. Poles now often find themselves accused of stealing jobs and benefits.
7.At a local pub, a group of middle-aged Paisley “buddies,” as residents call themselves, placed the blame for the lack of decent work and strained public services not on immigrants but on “Westminster” — shorthand for the unpopular Conservative government in London — and spent the next half-hour discussing currency options for an independent Scotland.