Building a society fit for 21st century
Last Friday, I was lucky enough to visit the Advanced Forming Research Centre at Inchinnan – a site that’s part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS).
The centre is at the leading edge of materials science, doing practical research into the stuff that makes up aircraft parts, renewable energy infrastructure, space satellites and much, much more.
I knew the work was technologically advanced – but I also learned that the work being carried out at the centre is genuinely world-leading, with many of the bits of kit and processes there done nowhere else in the world, far less the UK.
We should absolutely shout about this stuff from the rooftops, because it’s the sort of innovation and technological advance that creates high-value, high-skill jobs of a type that are hard to replicate anywhere else – and are more likely to stay in Scotland. The spin-offs from their work can already be seen with the set up of the Boeing facility at Westway in Renfrew, putting the lessons of the laboratory into practice in industry, creating jobs and pulling in investment that will last for decades to come.
I also heard about the Power Networks Demonstration Centre, currently based in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, but ready to open a site behind the Rolls-Royce factory later this summer.
Their work allows the power networks of today to transform to integrate the renewables of tomorrow, research that will help for decades to come – and from the summer it’s happening right here in Renfrewshire.
When you hear politicians on the TV talking about innovation and building the industries of the future, this is exactly what they mean.
We lost too much when the industries of the past were run down and destroyed by
Thatcher and her ilk. Many of our communities have never truly recovered from the deindustrialisation of the 1980s and the harm it caused society and our wider economy.
We can’t make the same mistakes again, and that means government ensuring they are behind initiatives like the NMIS – as the Scottish Government did by investing £75 million into the centre.
Scotland and the Scottish Government are trying to build a society and an economy fit for the 21st century, rather than be dragged back to the 19th as many of our opponents would like to happen.
Marrying up the power of these new industries with a social justice agenda is the way we can build not just business and industry, but also make sure the rewards of that growth are shared across society, not hoarded for a select few as we see under Westminster’s watch.
It’s exactly what every other European country aspires to do – look at Denmark and its decades at the top of wind energy or Norway; making sure its oil and gas wealth are invested back into their people rather than just being frittered away.
Just imagine the level of progress we could make with the full powers of independence and the ability to free ourselves from the dead hand of Westminster on our affairs.
There’s plenty in our country that needs to improve and improve quickly. But we shouldn’t be afraid of highlighting where we lead the world now.
And we certainly shouldn’t fear aiming to lead the world in other areas where our resources and our people can take us there.
Let’s shake off our natural reluctance to boast about ourselves and shout about Scotland’s global presence from the rooftops – and while we’re at it, get Renfrewshire on the map, too.
But only independence – and the power that gives us to shape that future – can deliver that bounty.