In 1707, an auld sang ended ... 300 years later, we cherished the start of a new sang
JUST before 9.30am on a May morning generations of Scots had only dared to dream might ever come to pass, a PA system in a church hall crackled into life.
The air was electric, the tension tangible, and the wait – 300 years long – was within touching distance of finally being over.
This was the first meeting of the new Scottish Parliament, history was unfolding before the nation’s eyes and yet there would be no great patriotic flag waving, rousing cheers or, for that matter, a particularly lavish ceremony.
Instead, it would fall to a Yorkshireborn 37-year-old father of two and civil servant, Paul Grice, to step up to the microphone in Edinburgh’s newly decorated Assembly Hall to declare the “first meeting of the Scottish Parliament, established under the Scotland Act” was in session.
For Scots who had felt the pain of Margaret Thatcher and the hated Community Charge, the divisions of the miners’ strike and the demise of Ravenscraig, who saw post boxes blown up in protest over the new Queen’s “EIIR2” insignia and debated whether it was Scotland’s oil, this was history, hopes and dreams, future possibilities and distant wrongs wrapped in a single sentence.
For the 129 new MSPS – 56 of them Labour who would form a coalition government with 17 Lib Dems – it was time to get this show back on the road.
And what a long and winding road this had been, stretching all the way from 12 May, 1999 to the early 13th century and the reign of Alexander II.
At Kirkliston, not far from the Assembly Hall, meeting place of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland now given over to Scotland’s new MSPS, noblemen and clergy had congregated in 1235 for the nation’s first parliamentary gathering.
For the next 472 years it laid down laws, locked horns with the Crown, emerged from Cromwell’s Protectorate to raise taxes and pass acts on everything from bankruptcy to Pocknet Fishing Upon the Water of Forth, to trade, bankruptcy and the Act Against Clandestine and Irregular Marriages.
The 1707 Act of Union brought it to a close; temporarily, at least.
As the nation emerged from the Second World War and the Scottish National Party gained pace, seeds for a new parliament were sown.
Of course, it was far from straightforward - it wouldn’t be Scottish politics otherwise.
There was the 1979 devolution referendum, Tam Dalyell’s sticky West Lothian question and a 52% vote in favour that, because not enough of the electorate had turned out, wasn’t enough to get it over the line.
Against a backdrop of the winter of discontent, the SNP’S withdrawal of support for Labour Government’s Scotland Act 1978 led to a General Election and paved the way for the Thatcher years.
Calls for Scottish devolution championed by the late Labour leader
John Smith were deafening by the time fresh-faced Tony Blair’s New Labour arrived in 1997.
The next referendum, in September that year, returned a resounding: “YES”.
And so to May 1999, the crackling PA system, the freshly laid blue carpet and the new MSPS with their fancy push button voting systems sitting at desks carved from light Scottish sycamore that seemed to shine against the dark panelled walls of a hall which once housed the United Free Church of Scotland.
Cost to kit it all out?
A snip at £7.5 million.
It would be a day drenched with symbolism and a smattering of petty politics, of gestures for the cameras and a few grand entrances.
There was Scottish Labour leader and soon to be inaugural First
Minister Donald Dewar, tall and gangly like a secondary school
geography teacher, putting differences aside to press flesh with a cock-a-hoop Alex Salmond.
The SNP leader and his 34 colleagues including a young Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney were making their own gesture: each had a white rose pinned over their hearts to symbolise the white cockade ribbon worn by the Jacobites who had followed Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Some couldn’t help but try grab a headline. Dorothy-grace Elder, a newspaper columnist turned SNP MSP, arrived in a 41-ton truck to raise awareness of fuel tax increases.
Later, she’d be smacked down after altering the strict wording of the MSPS’ pledge to serve, giving it her own tartan trim.
There was the sole Scottish Greens MSP Robin Harper, a modern studies and guidance teacher and the UK’S first elected Green parliamentarian thanks to the regional list vote.
Fresh from dealing with naughty pupils, he rubbed shoulders with giants of Scottish politics David Steel for the Lib Dems, James Douglashamilton for the Conservatives, and Labour stalwarts Gordon Jackson, Frank Mcaveety and soon to become First Minister, Henry Mcleish.
And there was Madam Ecosse. At 69 years old, as the eldest MSP, the SNP’S Winnie Ewing would be honoured as the first to take the oath.
At the stroke of 9.30am with the Yorkshireman’s formal declaration that the meeting was in progress done, she stood and raised her hand.
She had declined to take an oath before God preferring instead, as did many MSPS who followed, to give an affirmation.
“I do solemnly, sincerely and truthfully declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors according to law.”
She repeated in it Gaelic, signed her name and in a hushed hall delivered a speech 300 years in the making.
“The Scottish Parliament adjourned on the 25th day of March 1707 is hereby reconvened,” she said.
As applause subsided, she paid tribute to John Smith on what was the fifth anniversary of his death, and to those who “are no longer here, who didn’t live to see the promised land”.
With the last MSP sworn in, a new presiding officer David Steel was elected. He echoed the Earl of Seafield, the Scottish chancellor who had declared “thus endeth an auld sang” when the Scottish parliament was adjourned in 1707.
“We must cherish the Scottish Parliament,” he said. “This is the start of a new sang.”
With that, Scotland’s new MSPS retreated to the High Street hostelries to fulfil another promise.
The Scottish Parliament was back.