September 2014 we were full of hope.
Last trip to a pre-referendum rally
in George square, and Folk,
full of enthusiasm and certainty
that Yes would take the vote,
hugging and shaking hands,
politely ushering strangers to the stage
for a good view.
Then a ripple down my spine,
a reminder that this is a bubble,
Yes City.
In other places they were hanging out
the red, white and blue.
There was a flat-prosecco vibe in the air
even before the count was to begin.
‘How’s it goin?’,
I asked the guys conducting a bit of an exit poll,
‘aye, well, aye Ok.’
Then my own prosecco went flat and warm
as the first results came in.
Then the texts and messages,
and more than a bit of dismay.
‘Clackmannanshire is a Shitehole’ read one,
At 14, not much more than a wean,
his brighter future snuffed out,
along with his 2 year campaign
And there we have it, so off bed
with the radio on to snooze,
because there’s nothing worse than waking up
the morning after to bad news.
We’re all entitled to our points of view,
but the very next day the red, white, blue
and orange fash took over George square
and Cameron was claiming England as victim.
It was all riddled with such bad intention,
that the movement set-to right away,
making sure that one day,
somehow we’d smash the UK system,
see off the lies about pensions,
Brown’s vow and the EU.
And the rest of course is history;
we ran for cover and tribal belonging
anywhere we could,
the SNP, the Greens, the 45ers.
Sadly we now know that some of Nicola’s
yellow-foam-finger-waving ultras
became Alba, the infamous zero-percenters.
The lesson here, is that sometimes
those that seem the keenest,
can turn out to be somewhat extremist.
We will be independent one day,
of that I still feel sure,
as the populist, dystopian futures
catch up on us daily from Westminster
depriving the good folk out there
of their energy, their hopes,
their fair share of democracy and
access by the most desperate to these shores.
The red/blue Tory direction for England
Is an increasingly white,
Brexit loving, anti-EU nation,
harking back to old-school imperial measures
and cap doffing to royalty and aristocracy,
content in its own isolation.
But we must unite behind progressive
cross-party-and non-aligned causes.
Well except for Alba and the Tories.
They can get to blazes.
