Still incubating after all these years

During the 1987 General  Election, I was a constituency organiser for the SNP in the east end of Glasgow.

On the ground, along with the candidate who was from the Scottish Borders, we constructed a narrative that sent a clear message to people of Irish descent in the area.

That it made no sense for them to vote for the British Labour Party.

Indeed, Scottish independence would have a profound effect on the constitutional arrangements on the island of Ireland.

It was an insurgent election campaign, and our weapon of choice was a blizzard of unofficial leaflets delivered through every door in the constituency.

I know, as I delivered most of them myself.

As I recall the final leaflet, just before Polling Day, the candidate John MacVicar promised that if elected, he would not travel to the foreign parliament in England.

This had SNP HQ reaching for the Andrex.

When the 2015 General Election results came in, I allowed myself a satisfied smile here in Dún na nGall.

Clearly, my community’s loyalty to the Labour Party had vanished.

Like most of these seismic shifts in politics, it was largely generational.

Even amid the self-inflicted shitshow, respected pollsters are stating that the SNP will remain the largest party in Fair Caledonia.

That is remarkable durability despite their own best efforts.

The current SNP malaise once more proves that Thomas Jefferson was correct about what happens to people when they have power.

Back in 1987, I wrote an opinion piece for, if I remember correctly, the Scotsman newspaper.

The title that the sub picked was faithful to the copy, “Clan Ibrox is Scotland’s Trojan horse.”

I argued that a pro-union subculture was not so quietly incubating at Ibrox stadium.

Moreover, at some point in the future, when the constitutional question in Alba was central to political discourse, this Union flag-worshipping pathogen was ready to be activated.

The featured image shows ex-DUP leader Arlene Foster in the Ibrox trophy room.

She picked that location to launch her Together UK Foundation campaign in Scotland.

The Fermanagh woman certainly knows her constituency in Fair Caledonia.

There will be tens of thousands of them at Hampden tomorrow.


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15 thoughts on “Still incubating after all these years”

  1. Just watched STV news not a mention when it came to sport about the game yesterday let’s you know the type of country i live in

    Reply
  2. Papers full of talk again this morning of the massive rebuild Beale is about to begin in Govan.
    Why have none of them asked the most obvious question? Ie. Where’s the money coming from?
    The days of big transfer fees for the likes of Morelos and Kent are long gone. Is the lad from Norwich and his like, cheap or free transfer the answer?

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  3. Our aim is to be inclusive of all cultural and political backgrounds
    ……………………………………………….
    The above is from the Together UK webpage .
    Absolutely laughable when you see someone like Arlene Foster promoting this nonsense
    Foster along with the others in that photo is a dinosaur clinging on to values that belong in the dark ages
    So she is well suited to the venue the photo was taken .
    As they both have the same values

    Reply
  4. Pictures like that pander to the lowest common denominator and I know a good few of The Rangers fans who see through it.
    Imagine thinking that you must vote for a specific political party because you happen to support a specific team.
    What they fail to see is that it alienates them from larger swathes of the population.
    The real upside is that they are a diminishing pool and the net is getting pulled tighter and tighter.

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  5. It’s like I have always said:

    Independence for Ireland, Independence for Scotland.

    How any Celtic fan, of Irish origin especially, wants to remain part of Britain allied with the likes of the pictured mob is beyond me.

    Reply
  6. The picture prompts the recent decade’s joke ….what should they call the trophy room at Ibrox….just a room because there are no trophies in it.

    Reply
  7. They’re merely preaching to the converted. This frightful photo op only serves up more calorie laden staunchness to a politically lost subculture. It’s appeal to floating voters will be much less palatable.

    Reply

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