YouScotland - Guest Blog

Common Good Land

Scotland's Lost Assets
Andy Wightman, Campaigner and author of "Who Owns Scotland" argues it's time to revisit community ownership.

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In recent years the idea of community ownership of land and assets has been enthusiastically embraced by politicians across the UK and particularly in Scotland. In a country where over half the privately owned rural land is still held by a mere 352 landowners, land reform now allows communities a pre-emptive right to buy land when it comes onto the market.

But before having embraced this new fashionable idea, politicians might have paused to consider the fate of the common land that already existed. Had they done so they would have realised that community ownership is nothing new.

Before the Reformation, as much as half of Scotland was held in some form of common ownership. There were extensive Crown commons that had never been feudalised, commonties in every parish for the use of the common people, extensive burgh commons which provided income and sustenance to ScotlandÕs burghs and a whole array of mosses, loans, greens and other forms of communistic arrangement.
As it happens, common ownership of land is a very old idea.

Tom Johnston, the historian and former Secretary of State for Scotland concluded in that," adding together the common lands of the Royal Burghs, the common lands of the Burghs which held their foundation rights from private individuals, the extensive commons of the villages and the hamlets, the common pasturages and grazings, and the commons attaching to run-rig tenancies, we shall be rather under than over estimating the common acreage in the latter part of the sixteenth century, at fully one-half of the entire area of Scotland.

He goes on, "As late as 1800 there were great common properties extant; many burghs, towns and villages owned lands and mosses; Forres engaged in municipal timber-growing; Fortrose owned claypits; Glasgow owned quarries and coalfields; Hamilton owned a coal pit; Irvine had mills, farms and a loom shop; Kirkwall owned farms and a town hall; Lanark had a mill and an inn; Lochmaben had a farm; Musselburgh had five mills, a brick and tile work, a quarry, a town hall, a steel yard and shares in a race stand; etc........."

By the time the Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations in Scotland reported in 1835, however, '"Wick had lost in the law courts its limited right of commonty over the hill of Wick, and owned no property; Abernethy owned nothing, nor did Alloa. Bathgate was the proud possessor of the site of a fountain and a right of servitude over four and a half acres of moorland. Beith had no local government of any kind; BoÕness owned nothing; Castle-Douglas owned only a shop; Coldstream was stripped bare, not even possessing rights in its street dung"

Visit any town in Scotland and you will come across names such as Market Muir, Market Street, Muirton, Links, and Green. These all denote forms of common land such as all burghs in Scotland owned at on time. The property of the burgh was known as the common good since it was to be used for the common good of the inhabitants.

And this property still exists. It still belongs to the people and forms an important part of their cultural heritage. It is also a significant resource for regenerating local communities. But since 1975 when Town Councils were abolished, this land has been subsumed within new local authority structures and assets that should have been carefully stewarded for the benefit of the inhabitants of the former burghs have, instead, been lost, neglected, and in many cases misappropriated. Some communities took action to protect their assets. Thus, for example, St Andrews transferred their town common (which happens to have the famous golf course on it) to a Trust through a private Act of Parliament.

Look at the accounts of most local authorities in Scotland and you will find a page or two devoted to the Common Good funds. These are funds inherited from the former Town Councils of the burghs of Scotland in 1975. Some funds are quite sizeable. Aberdeen has £31 million, Inverness has £6.9 million and Musselburgh £7.5 million. Most are far more modest ranging from a few thousand to one or two hundred thousand pounds.

The real tragedy, however, is that the true extent of the common good of our towns is staggering and yet too many local authorities simply donÕt know what it is, where it is, how much it's worth, or who it really belongs to. The total reported value in the accounts of local authorities stands at just over £181 million. That's £400 of assets for every man, woman and child in Scotland! But given the missing assets, inaccurate accounting and lost receipts the total is probably in the region of £2 billion.

In Hamilton alone, £50 million has disappeared from the Common Good Fund. In Edinburgh, millions of pounds have gone missing and, incredibly, the former Waverley Market in Princes Street, a common good asset worth over £40 million is leased on a 206 year lease for 1p per year!

How has this sorry state of affairs come to pass? Why has such wealth not been managed in such a way that its value grew and would provide land for much needed community use such as housing? The answer is a complicated tale of incompetence, forgotten history, ignorance of officals and clear misappropriation of funds.
Citizens are beginning to wake up to this hidden wealth. At the same time, communities are being empowered to take ownership and control of land and property and to fashion a more prosperous and sustainable future for themselves. However, much of this has been achieved through the allocation of money from the Lottery.

For many communities its not necessary to seek opportunities on the open market or to seek financial support from the Lottery in order to build up their asset base since common good assets already exist and could form the basis for building a multi-million property portfolio that could deliver housing, leisure and much needed community facilities.

A new Act of the Scottish Parliament should ensure a proper asset register, proper accounting and, most importantly, a statutory power for community bodies to take back title to their common good assets. If this were done, the consequences could be massive in terms of economic regeneration, civic pride, community cohesion and the development of a new commonweal.

And they could go further by endowing communities who have no Common Good Fund with one, by supporting a bold vision of community led urban regeneration. In my view the whole of the Clydeside regeneration project should be community owned and managed. They are doing these sorts of things in London (Greenwich Leisure and Coin Street Builders are just two examples) and other parts of England. Common Good assets are the place to start.

There are literally hundreds of millions of pounds floating about in the form of previously unaccounted for sets, undervalued assets and underused assets. This wealth belongs to the local community and not to the Council and can be used to begin a process of civic renewal and physical regeneration, to deliver wealth and prosperity, and to give back to towns across Scotland some self respect, belief and power to better the welfare of their community.

Andy Wightman is an independent writer and researcher. His report, "Common Good Land in Scotland". A review and critique is available at www.andywightman.com/commonweal/commongood.html

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Stuart McHardy

The Gatekeepers

Scottish history lecturer, storyteller and author Stuart McHardy examines who controls what in modern day Scotland

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Back in the 1990s the late Robbie Robertson, Assistant Director of the then Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (SCCC) referred in a magazine article to his own organisation as being one of the gatekeepers of Scottish culture. This was in response to the suppression of an SCCC report on the teaching of Scots language and Scottish history, that Robbie had compiled a after a very wide consultation process.  Effectively he was accusing his own board of suppressing Scottish culture.

The idea of the gatekeepers is one that still has relevance. Much has been made over the past couple of hundred years of the fact that Scotland has separate religious, legal and educational systems from England and that this supposedly has helped to preserve Scottish identity. I suggest the opposite is the case and that these institutions have been nothing other than the gatekeepers of a mindset that is Unionist, Imperialist, male chauvinist and fundamentally anti-Scottish, in both cultural and political terms.

The lack of a central place for teaching Scottish history ( and recognising the independent and continued vibrant existence of the Scots tongue) within the Curriculum is part of a bigger picture. As a particular example, back in the 60s, as a student I expressed an interest in studying Robert Burns within the English Department of Edinburgh University. The Oxbridge trained tutor was aghast and told me there was no one in the department who could help with such a bizarre request.

Things have got better since then but the problem remains. The gatekeepers of the law, the universities and to a lesser extent the church have all flourished under the Union and a mindset has arisen that sees anything too overtly Scottish as a threat to the Union. I have never been a member of the SNP but my lifelong commitment to the study of my own culture and history has often led to both politicians and civil servant assuming that I am, and reacting accordingly. In particular the Labour Party whose sleazy domination of Scottish politics has thankfully now been broken, seem to be particularly cursed with this notion. The assumption seems to be that anyone interested in their own culture must be anti-British. This is then generally, through a remarkable process of distorted logic, taken to mean that such people are anti-English.

While I am more than happy to be virulently anti-English in terms of football and rugby, and take umbrage at the number of English people appointed by the gatekeepers to positions of authority within Scottish cultural organisations, I am not anti-English - like many Scots I have family members who are English born. What I am anti is the mindset of those who essentially support the Union because it is the best way to feather their own nests who then try to justify this by supporting the ongoing suppression of Scottish culture.

The current brouhaha regarding the dumbed down and offensive programming of the BBC in Scotland is a case in point. In fact all our media are tarred with the same, bourgeois and sycophantic brush. As an author I am very well aware that the last few decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of books published in, and about Scotland. Yet our so-called national press slavishly follow the agenda of their confreres in London in terms of who and what they review. Given the blinkered metrovincial self-importance that dominates the media in London is it little wonder that the recent row over the “Scottish Six O'Clock News” concept was so virulently resisted within the local branch office of the BBC (EBC?) in Queen Margaret Drive.

At al levels our indigenous culture, literary, musical and in the visual arts is thriving but you would hardly guess from the media. Things are however changing and there is hoped that the schools curriculum will be soon be developed to allow our children the opportunity to know who they are and where they came form. Whether the media notice is another matter.

At University level the presence of such luminaries as Ted Cowan at Glasgow and Tom Devine a in Edinburgh are signs that at last the gate is beginning to creak open, and it is to be hoped that the current administration will take the opportunity to support the teaching and promotion of Scottish culture. The gatekeepers’ problem is that nowadays with post-colonial theory beginning to be applied to Scottish culture their comfortable positions within a British state that has long seen Scotland and the Scots as problems to be managed, will be threatened. An thon wuid be nae bad thing ava.

Stuart McHardy is an author, professional storyteller and lecturer in Scottish history and folklore.

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Kevin Wiliamson

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ASKS IF THE BBC’S DAYS IN SCOTLAND ARE NUMBERED?

A few days before Scotland’s First Minister launched an ambitious and far-reaching “national conversation” on whether Scots should remain part of Britain, a Scottish Broadcasting Commission was established which could conceivably challenge the BBC’s public broadcasting monopoly in Scotland.

The BBC’s Six O’Clock News bulletin – the most influential source of news in the UK – has become central to this debate, with many influential Scots questioning its validity, its quality, its political role, and even its necessity. Many Scots, including Alex Salmond himself, have declared that they want the Six O’Clock News scrapped and replaced by an hour long “Scottish Six”, produced in Scotland, by Scottish journalists.  The remit for a “Scottish Six” would be to cover national and international news, but from a Scottish rather than a London-centric perspective.

Maybe it was in a fit of pique, maybe it was unintentional irony, or maybe it was just confirmation that the BBC’s Six O’Clock News bulletin is no longer fit for purpose, but on the same day (14/7/07) that Alex Salmond launched his White Paper on Scottish Independence, the BBC’s London-based news editors may have sealed their own fate.

No matter which way you look at it, the launch of the SNP’s White Paper on Independence was a big news story, not just here in Scotland, but internationally.  If Alex Salmond’s ambitious project comes to fruition, then Great Britain will go the way of the Soviet Union, and simply cease to exist. To paraphrase that most quintessential of English comedy groups, Britain will become an ex-country.  Deceased.  No more. That this was the biggest news story of the day in the UK is incontestable.  Unless perhaps, you happened to be a dyed-in-the-wool British ostrich, with head stuck firmly up yer Daily Telegraph.

So how did the BBC’s Six O’Clock News team choose to report this important breaking story?  Lead item?  Second item?  Not quite. The lead story was a consumer piece about the recall of plastic toys.  It was a precautionary decision by the company Mattel, which, perhaps, they should have announced through paid advertising in the national press.  This was followed by another similar item on the recall of old phone batteries. Next up was a lengthy feature on how bad weather and flooding were affecting the English tourist trade this summer.  Two lengthy reports were filed from Weston-Super-Mare and the Yorkshire Dales.  This particular item could have been carried any day this month, at any point, in any news bulletin. It was what could have been described as “a filler”. Next was a purely regional story about the murder of a young child in London.  It was reported that police were not searching for anyone in connection with tragedy.  This was followed by another, again purely regional, murder story.

Next up, Scotland!  At last.  Except it was about an e-coli break-out in Paisley.  You have to hand it to the BBC news editors, they love their Scottish health scare stories.  Nobody could say the London BBC news rooms aren’t interested in such things as deep-fried Mars bars, or Glaswegians dying of lung cancer. Would the Paisley food scare be a tenuous Scottish link to the story about the break-up of Britain?  No.  The next item was yet another murder story.  This time about the death of a biker.  In South London.

Finally, almost fourteen minutes into the early evening news bulletin, the BBC editors deigned to broadcast three full minutes on the biggest news story to hit Scotland in our lifetimes.  It had been relegated to “News Item Number 8’.  The low priority given to the piece was, we can only presume, to reassure Her Majesty and the rest of London/England, that it was all just a storm in a whisky jar. The feature consisted of footage of Alex Salmond launching his White Paper.  Followed by an oppositional response from Des Browne (an MP elected to Westminster, London).  Followed by a vox pop on the streets of Edinburgh.

This vox pop was notable, only in that it consisted of just two interviews, each less than ten seconds long.  The first was with a young guy wearing a Scotland football top - who was against Scottish Independence.  The second was with an old woman - who was also against Scottish Independence.  End of vox pop.  Call me old fashioned but it wasn’t quite my idea of either impartiality or depth.
Only the BBC News editors can answer why they chose to respond in this manner.  But I suspect that this travesty of reportage will not have gone unnoticed in the corridors of power at Holyrood, and may well turn out be one of the straws that break the British broadcaster’s back. 

The new Scottish Broadcasting Commission’s remit is wide-ranging, and goes way beyond looking at a “Scottish Six”.  What is now being considered is amending The Scotland Act to transfer all broadcasting powers, currently under the political control of Westminster, over to Holyrood.  The ramifications of this should not be underestimated.  The creation of a separate publicly-funded Scottish Broadcasting Corporation is one option being given serious consideration at the highest level.
And not before time.  Many Scottish license payers feel they are being royally shafted by the current arrangement.  Whilst 9% of the UK’s population lives in Scotland, only 3% of the programmes commissioned by the BBC are produced in this country.  Hardly value for money.

When you add this to the widely perceived London-centric bias that dominates the BBC’s national agenda and output, you can see why the current set-up, just like that of the British state itself, has only itself to blame for hastening its own demise.

Kevin Williamson is a writer, publisher, and daily blogger at The Scottish Patient . His collection of poems, In A Room Darkened, is published by Two Ravens Press (£8.99) on October 15th

Independence - A Movement as well as a Party

Ian Ross lives in Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire and has just turned 80. A lifelong campaigner for Scottish independence, he reflects on the strategic challenge facing the new SNP led Government at Holyrood and the need to broaden support for constitutional change.

The Scottish National Party deserves to be congratulated on emerging from the wilderness despite a hostile press and a hostile establishment and managing to form a government in the Scottish Parliament if only a minority one. After a long succession over the decades of Secretaries of State and First Ministers, all taking their cue from London it is truly remarkable and almost incredible to have a First Minister  who actually cares about Scotland, loves and respects Scotland and is prepared to speak up in its defence when necessary.

But excessive optimism would be rash if one looks hard at the composition of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish National Party stands for government of the Scottish people by the Scottish people and for the Scottish people. The Scottish Labour Party stands for government of the Labour Party by the Labour Party and for the Labour Party. The Scottish Conservative Party stands for government by London. It is difficult to discern exactly what the LibDems stand for. Rumour has it that their ability to coalesce with a party most of whose views they do not share and their refusal to coalesce with a party most of whose views they do share is bound up with the furtherance of the United Kingdom political career of Sir Menzies Campbell.

The mixture of opinions among the Scottish people is equally unreassuring. It is well known that only about 25% favour independence, the raison d'être of the SNP.  Three hundred years of union with a country ten times bigger has produced a population of provincials diffident about declaring their Scottishness and apprehensive of shouldering responsibility for their country. Many people express pride in their Scottish ancestry only to follow this hastily with an assertion that other things are more important. Scottish attributes - accent, clothes, home address - tend to be treated as fashion  accessories to enhance social attraction, not simply to be enjoyed and loved. Home Rule appears to be essentially a financial matter, GERS, Barnett, figures not adding up etc. A neighbour discussing
independence coldly asked "Can we afford it?". as though discussing the purchase of a new fridge. The change of one of Scotland's oldest institutions from the Bank of Scotland into "HBOS" does not seem to shock anybody. Might it be imagined that one day Edinburgh Castle will be taken over by PC World for use as a warehouse and bits of old junkvlike the Scottish Crown Jewels and the Stone of Scone will be sold off to an American museum? Is it conceivable that Bannockburn, Flodden and Culloden might be supposed by teenagers to have been venues for football matches? It is perhaps this absence of national self assurance that forces people to seek fulfilment in bleak sectarianism, , tribalism and obsession with football.

Let us be quite clear about the situation in which Scotland finds itself. Little point in repeating ad nauseam the economic arguments produced by either side. Scotland forms part of Britain which, let's face it, is a euphemism for Greater England. The attitude of Westminster to Scotland and all things Scottish is one of contempt or at best indifference - as recent events testify. In its treatment of Scottish resources it is rapacious. It smiles benevolently at quaint provincial attributes but is outraged at any suggestion of nationhood. Tony Blair dismisses scornfully what he calls the politics of grievance but then proceeds to demonstrate his complete lack of respect for Scotland's First Minister and its legal system. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the wellbeing of Scotland will be best served by severing the link with Westminster and replacing it  with a good neighbourly relationship. We do not need a penny of English money but we must insist on having every single penny of Scottish money. But there is another thing to be made clear. The Scottish people must be made plainly aware of the realities facing them. A means must be found of restoring awareness and pride in the national identity and infusing the will and the courage to do something about it. Without this being achieved, without positive, conscious, full blooded support from the Scottish people, the core policy of the Scottish National Party will be meaningless. It should not be forgotten that the SNP's electoral success resulted not from a desire for independence but from disillusionment with the Labour Party. The Scottish National Party has the task of putting over a message which is as yet not understood and which the average political party is probably ill equipped to perform.

The SNP might widen its appeal by making overtures to other interests, other facets of Scottish life - universities both teachers and students), school teachers, churches, the Islamic community, the Poles etc. in search of a wider diversity of talent and a sensitivity towards principles and loyalties which perhaps the Scottish people may have lost. We need a proper St. Andrew's Day. We need a proper national anthem, not a football ditty but something like Finlandia or the Deutschlandlied or the Norwegian national anthem to inspire a sense of national loyalty. Scottish history should be taught properly and attractively and the syllabus for doing so should be properly thought out and not left to chance. Scottishness and Scottish nationality need to be made fashionable, not something to be dodged or swept under the carpet. The Saltire should also be made fashionable. What about a table top Saltire to adorn a mantelpiece or have a place at SNP conference tables; something attractively (and, yes, expensively) designed. With a bit of financial help would this not be a job for the Saltire Society?

A possible alternative might be the development alongside the SNP of a Movement, something of a more or less cultural nature using propagandantry that Scotland is and could become.Our homeland is not just a matter of bens and glens. I am fascinated by our magnificent Firths, the amazing and exciting variety of scenery in such a small country, the gracious urban tenements to be found all over Scotland, the dignified classical style of many Church of Scotland churches (I am a Catholic myself) and the French Renaissance style characteristics of some of our great houses - redolent of a time when we were part of Europe and not just a fag end of greater England. I suspect that a movement of this sort cannot be readily engineered by a political party organisation unavoidably preoccupied with votes, fund raising and the bread and butter interests of constituents.

There remains the position of the Scottish establishment. Nations are destroyed not only by military defeat or destruction of their physical resources. Their cultural identity can also be destroyed by the elimination of their cultural treasures - objets d'art, buildings, cities and also the personalities who guide and direct the nation and give it expression.. The Nazi Germans were adept at this especially in Eastern Europe but, even in the UK, their invasion plans included a kind of Baedekers Guide of all the famous people - writers, artists,politicians, professors etc. - all of whom were to be rounded up and removed. Scotland has suffered signally in this respect though not in the methodical Nazi fashion. The rot may have started as early as 1513 at the battle of Flodden when Scottish spears were no match for English halberds and the King and virtually all of his nobility lay dead leaving an orphaned nation. In 1603 the Union of the Crowns led to the departure to London of the bulk of the Scottish nobility in search of fleshpots. No doubt the Union of 1707 led to a similar exodus. Thomas Carlyle described the Scottish nobility as a set of famishing ferocious hyenas from whom the country had at no time and in no way derived any benefit whatever. Hopefully this draconian description is now out of date but it does seem in our present time that there are not as many people of real clout in Scotland as there might be and who could play a positive role in the nation's affairs.

One wonders if it might be possible to consider - very cautiously and very carefully - the setting up of a kind of voluntary "Second Chamber" to complement the Scottish Parliament. It could be a kind of club that met at intervals and held debates rather after the manner of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Perhaps the Church of Scotland would make their Assembly Hall available. Perhaps the Royal High School could assume something of its originally envisaged role. The members of such a body would approximate to the Scottish "great and the good" and might contain representatives from the Churches, Islam, immigrant communities, universities, industry, business, etc. Such a body would of course have no statutory status but if it contained the right people and conducted its debates suitably, it might well constitute a valuable voice and a potent expression of Scottish opinion.

We live in what may turn out to be one of the most significant moments of Scottish history. The time may possibly have come when the Scots rediscover who and what they are, learn to walk tall, rejoice in the beauty of their homeland and take pride in their ability to exploit its rich resources. The French writer, Renan, described nationalism as the memory of having done great things together and the desire to go on doing great things together. To paraphrase the words of General de Gaulle, addressing the crowds of Quebec, Vive l'Ecosse! Vive l'Ecosse libre!

John Drummond

John Drummond. founding member of the Constitutional Commission explains why it is now time for a New Constitutional Convention and how you can help.

Who wants a Constitution? Well, actually Scotland does. Indeed we have never been in greater want of a constitution than now. Put simply, a constitution tells you what a body (a country, a social club) stands for, as well as what it will not stand for. Granted, some constitutional discussions may seem dry and boring - until the time comes when you need to look to your rights and responsibilities. Could you say right now what these are? Assuming you could figure out what rights you have; do you know what safeguards exist to protect these rights?

Let’s say the state decides to go to war, and you don’t. You choose to live in a democracy so you accept that you are bound by the majority view. So what constitutes a majority? One vote, one hundred, a thousand? After all this is a major decision. A vote taken where? In parliament; which parliament? An opinion poll? A million people on the streets?

None of this is new and various states have tackled it in different ways and come to a variety of answers. Few, however, have taken the peculiar route travelled in the UK and ended with an unwritten constitution.  It’s no secret that unwritten constitutions are deeply unfashionable - and for good reason. (Taken to its extreme there is nothing to prevent the UK parliament deciding by a single vote that having red hair is unconstitutional.) Or it could abolish the Scotland Act, maybe deciding that devolution hasn’t worked as intended.

That’s OK; you say, we have checks and balances like the House of Lords. In the light of the cash for peerages row, one is reminded of the old description of the Chicago police force as: “the best that money could buy”. So you see this is serious stuff. And it goes on. For some time the UK had two Prime Ministers - GB and TB. Who is really in charge? Who knows? The only guide seems to be press reports, and the media says it is difficult to decide because there are no precedents. You mean it isn’t written down somewhere who is in charge? And who decides? Nope, the decision appears to rest on the fact that it was done this way once before, so it must be fine.

Lest we forget too, Prime Minister Blair was elected by a minority of the electorate and chose to hand over to someone else in mid term and at no stage were the governed consulted. This is so crude and unsatisfactory that the terms ‘banana’ and ‘republic’ come readily to mind.

Soon the Conservatives will announce their latest round of constitutional tinkering with the odd Grand Committee here and a review body there. And this will be followed, as sure as night follows day, by a response from another political party. The outcome will be minor refurbishments to a crumbling edifice that is well past being ‘fit for purpose’ for the 21st century. Moreover, with a minority government in Scotland the likelihood is that constitutional issues will intensify. And we will be in the front line of these constitutional meanderings. Do we really want all these essential matters dealt with on a piecemeal basis?

Go to www.constitutionalcommission.org , if you agree that this is no way to run a country. There you’ll find a description of our appeal to have all constitutional matters affecting Scotland debated and decided in this country and how we‘d like to help determine a written constitution. Importantly we want to do this by asking the people. The usual form for constitutional debates is that the politicians decide what’s best and put it to the rest of us. We’d like to reverse this process. You can help. Join us.

John Drummond lives in Kinrosss, is the Managing Director of good corporate governance consultancy Integrity Works, and is a founding member of the Constitutional Commission. He was also recently elected to YouScotland's Advisory Group.

Fiona Sinclair

"I warn you not to fall ill, not to be old, not to be disabled or poor" - Neil Kinnock, speech of 7th June 1983

- And most certainly not to be autistic, or to love someone who is autistic, in a state that is hell-bent on social control.

Fiona Sinclair is the founder of Autism Rights, and mother of an autistic child. Now living in Ayrshire, she is a longstanding community activist, and successfully led a campaign to close a major waste incinerator plant near Inverness.

It is not just ID cards that threaten our  civil liberties, it is a whole array of legislation and policies that mount a cumulative assault on some of our most cherished ideals about the society we live in. In the long run, all our lives will be deeply affected by the legislation and policy that I have outlined in Autism Rights' Briefing Paper `Incompetent, Abusive, or both?" read here 

This paper makes a devastating case against a Scottish Executive that has indulged in the most asinine regurgitation of Westminster policies of control. While the London-based press has lifted the lid on many of the individual pieces of regressive legislation, specifically the policy and legislation on databases and the Mental Health Act, the Scottish media has virtually ignored even these. However, the really nasty stuff is in the interaction between a number of legislative and policy changes that clearly have been inspired and directed by the UK government, but have been pushed further and faster by the Scottish Executive.

Scotland's Mental Health Act, which was introduced after much controversy in 2003, enables the enforced medication in the community of people (i.e. adults and children) with `mental disorders`  under Community Treatment Orders.  The Westminster Department of Health's own research review recently concluded that these CTOs would be wholly ineffective.  The Scottish Executive has classed ASD as a `mental disorder`, and has thus categorised mental illness on a par with autism, which is a disability. SIGN, who publish clinical guidance on behalf of the Scottish Executive, are expected to recommend the `treatment` of people with ASD with dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, that are currently marketed for the `treatment` of children and adults labelled with ADHD.

The Scottish Executive's conference on ASD in November 2005 gave tacit backing to this guidance, in spite of evidence demonstrating the benefits of dietary change and nutritional supplementation, as against inadequate research into the effects of drugs such as Risperidone on children with ASD, and a scaling up of the official warning on the adverse effects of such drugs, which have been directly implicated in fatalities amongst children.

Place all of this in the context of a situation where parents may be threatened with the withdrawal of educational provision for their children if they refuse to drug them and where threats of the initiation of  child protection proceedings may be made, when parents push for services in healthcare and education that they believe are more appropriate to the needs of their children. At the tip of an iceberg of ignorance, wilful incompetence and intimidation, a disproportionate number of parents of autistic children will find themselves accused of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy (MsbP), where it is claimed that they are using their children to seek attention, mainly from health professionals.

The UK government has compiled guidelines on MsbP, which overlap with the international clinical criteria for ASD.  At the lower end of the iceberg, professionals frequently accuse parents of being responsible for their child's autistic behaviours or genuine medical problems, even where a diagnosis of ASD has been made. This is bad enough, you might think - but the absence of standards appropriate to the needs of people with ASD, the absence of enforcement of legislation or regulation  that support service provision, the general crass ignorance of ASD amongst education, health  and social care professionals and wilful incompetence within officialdom at both local and national levels all conspire to create the kind of hell that has culminated in suicides and other deaths of mothers and their children and widespread stress to people with autism and their families . Why would any service provider budget properly for services for people with autism and their families, when there are so many disincentives ranged against this?

Of course, some of these disincentives don't just apply to people with autism -  they also apply to other people with disabilities, carers, the elderly, the mentally ill and the poor.  Yet more shoddy legislation and policy reinforces an already oppressive situation:- The Adult Support and Protection Bill gives a local authority the power to take a vulnerable adult out of their family home against their will and without the right of appeal. It also includes the power to imprison any family members that resist such a measure. Thus, the very local authorities that are charged with assessing and providing a service, and who so often prove to be totally resistant to fulfilling these responsibilities in any competent fashion, have acquired powers to `punish` families who disagree with the provision on offer, or who are battling to achieve any provision at all.

The Scottish Executive's proposals for  `reforming the children's support system` make provision for `data sharing` on all children. but hold particular concerns over the way they will collate and distribute professional opinion on children with disabilities, because of the conflation of `child support` with `child protection` within these policies. Given the clear association that government is making between autism and pseudo-medical diagnoses such as MSBP,  there is a very clear threat to families with autistic children.

Although, in their totality, these legislative and policy changes have a worse effect on people with autism and their families, a number of these changes impact just as badly on other groups within society. The Mental Health Act makes specific mention of the all-embracing diagnostic label of `personality disorder`. Not only is this a contested diagnostic label  (even the psychiatrist behind his profession's diagnostic `bible` admits that most psychiatric labels cannot be scientifically verified),  it should be recognised as the Stalinist's all-encompassing solution for quiet disposal of a government's  `awkward squad`. We should take heed when `researchers reveal` that 1 in 20 people has a `personality disorder`, the incidence of which is much higher if you are on a low income or are unemployed .....

The choice for our future is clear – do we want to rebuild a civilised Scottish Society, or do we want to march relentlessly towards a Stasi State?

Go here for for more information on Autism Rights and how to get invoved in the campaign 

Pat Kane

Pat Kane is director of Scottish Futures (www.scottishfutures.net), an ideas and policy blog for progressive Scotland. He is also author of The Play Ethic, and one half of Hue and Cry.

The weirdness of seeing Alex Salmond stand in the First Minister's spot of the Scottish Parliament – with Bashir Ahmed, Scotland first Asian MSP, beaming at his party leader from behind – isn't really dissipating, a few days after I initially watched it in the EasyJet departure lounge at Glasgow. (No, it's alright, I'm not fleeing the country in response – my partner in love and consultancy lives in London, my children in Glasgow, so this place is as familiar to me as Hillhead tube station. And just as violently orange).

Me and Alex go back about twenty years, when as a fresh-faced young funkateer, I threw myself and my minor celebrity status into the Govan-era (Sillars '88-'92) of Scottish Nationalist politics. I recall quite a few mutually perplexed meetings with Salmond, who always seemed to have wheels within wheels whirring away behind his bonhomie and avuncularity.

I also recall not quite understanding the venom that existed between him and the Sillarsites – weren't they all left-wing nationalists, differing slightly on the route to independence (Salmond more gradualist and constitutional-conventional, Sillars looking for a majority of Westminster MP's to lever Scotland out of the British state)? This may have been the reason why I didn't push myself towards any kind of seat, or more official alignment: SNP party politics seemed like (and I misapply the Orwell quote about nationalism here, but it works very well at this level) the 'narcissism of minor differences'.

So to see Salmond, plumper at the middle and thinning on top (though much better tailored), trying desperately to contain his glee at leading any kind of administration in the Scottish Parliament, is to put a certain angst about the direction of Scottish politics to rest. If there's anyone in the world who will enjoy setting the tone and bringing to life a Scottish parliamentary culture, it's Salmond. He's got the first part of his life's wish.

But will he get the second – statehood for Scotland? I'm not so starry-eyed about the possibilities of minority government as many other commentators are. Yes, it's true that the essentially social-democratic nature of Scottish politics means that there's already a list of converged policies – "scrapping the council tax, cutting business rates, abolishing prescription charges, cutting class sizes, extending drug rehabilitation, promoting affordable housing, developing renewable energy, opposing Trident, rejecting nuclear power", as Iain Macwhirter lists it – that the SNP could happily proceed with building consensuses for.

Though "opposing" Trident, in some unspecific way, isn't the same as disengaging from the neo-imperial delusions of the British state, in a way that would signal the end of its great-power status, and send shockwaves throughout the world. And the "Scottish ambition" that Alex vowed to pursue, particularly in the realm of economic performance, really has to be grasped with all the powers the SNP can get a hold of. On Scottish Futures, the blog I've set up to provide an open space for progressive Scottish policy (www.scottishfutures.net), we've been looking at a paper from the political scientist Micheal Keating on Scottish Independence (available here )

Keating notes, with some fatigue, that debates about the economics of independence are either an expression of Nationalist optimism – low taxes, meaning vigorous businesses, enabling high spending on public services, hello Nirvana – or Unionist dystopia (the locusts and plagues of Labour rhetoric in the election). In between, there is the possibility of what he calls a 'networks and concertation' model of the Scottish economy and society.

'Networks' meaning the strong and open links between firms, governments and universities that can happen in a small nation, meaning that good ideas and best practice get quickly circulated: and 'concertation' meaning the kind of agreement about overall development goals between unions, business, civil society, etc, that you see in places like Ireland, Finland and Catalonia.

Keating's final point is the most relevant: "It is the political economy of independence, rather than the constitution, that remains the greatest challenge". As the SNP minority administration face what has sounded in recent days like a surly and bruised set of opposition parties, the idea that there's space in their heads to think about "the political economy of independence" is maybe ridiculous. But their opposition should be right to suspect that the SNP has an ultimate agenda, heading towards grappling with those kinds of challenges. Keating's analysis of independence is sophisticated - as much about the renegotiation and reconnection of Scotland to these islands, and to the wider world, as it is about "separation".

The question, as ever, is whether that analysis can begin to convince those in other parties that their own "Scottish ambitions" are best realisable through a movement towards independence. And beyond the 'tick-list' of shared policies, it's impossible to predict whether Salmond's practice of a "more reflective model of democracy" (as he put it in his acceptance speech) will cause those changes of heart and mind. In any case, as a stage in the long haul, it's going to be at least an excitingly bumpy ride over the next few years.

Read more of Pat Kane at www.scottishfutures.net   - join in! ( but remember to come back here too!)

Tom Sheilds

Election Re-Run?

Cult diarists turned Guest Blogger Tom Sheids reflects on what it was like to be a witness to history at the Glasgow count centre on election night - Govan no more!

We have our brave new dawn with Labour no longer the biggest party in Holyrood. But the night before was pretty gruesome.

My remit for the Sunday Herald during the election campaign was to report on the minority parties and elicit some humour from their more outré manifesto promises.The scenes at the Glasgow election count in the SECC had aspects distinctly more ludicrous than anything the craziest of candidates could make up.

Perhaps I have an over-developed sense of the ridiculous but it struck me as odd that a burger van should be imported to provide sustenance through the long night of counting. Parties had been lecturing the electorate on the importance of healthy eating and here we were confronted by a diet of cheesy chips. Even cheesier were the antics of some of the parties’ camp followers. (Not a reference to the two Christian parties’ antipathy to the gay lifestyle.) We are used to bad blood between SNP and Labour. But a scuffle between a Labour MP and a Muslim Christian People’s Alliance candidate is a development we can live without. The sight of police wading in to the crowd at an election count is not edifying, particularly on a night when the task is to rebuild a nation.

The real challenge to self-belief was happening in the counting hall where the chaos was beyond belief. At least in Glasgow, if not elsewhere, the electronic counting technology was working passably well.
The confusion had been caused by the decision to have both the Holyrood regional list and constituency ballots on one piece of paper. Voters knew they had two choices to make but hundreds of thousands of them obviously had no clue how or where o make their marks.The new technology gave observers the opportunity to watch on big screens as dubious or debatable ballot papers were scrutinised. It would have been hilarious were it not so serious. Some papers resembled a bingo card marked by a demented player. Others, littered with various versions of 12X, looked like efforts to win the football pools.

When the fun was over, about 150,000 voters had been disenfranchised. I am no expert in constitutional matters but I quickly formed the opinion that we had here was an invalid election which should really be run again with ballot papers that are easier to understand. I do not voice this opinion too loudly in case someone in authority agrees. As Bob Dylan sang, what do we have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice.

The election campaign was long and tiring process. There is nothing worse than politicians pretending they are interested in what people think. Actually, there is. It’s TV and radio presenters getting on election buses and pretending to be interested in what members of the public think. From my point of view, it was worth the effort to get a long-overdue regime change in Scotland. Unless, of course, Jack and the conservatives in the Labour Party have managed to do a coalition deal with Auntie Annabel and the Conservatives.

Tom

Peter Curran

Why I am voting SNP

On May Day 2007, guest blogger and long time Labour voter Peter Curran Explains why

In the Glasgow of the late 1940s, if you didn't support the Labour Party, you were either well-off or something more complex, aspirational. My widowed mother and I lived in a decaying tenement in Dennistoun; my father had died of tuberculosis, after the humiliation and degradation of unemployment in the 1930s. We typified the kind of people for whom the Labour Party had been brought into existence, and our support for Labour was instinctive and fundamental.

I have always been a Labour voter, but never a Party member. My support has been at the ballot box, with occasional canvassing and leafleting activity, and some modest financial support. Throughout the nightmare years of Thatcher, I railed against the infighting of the Party that kept it from effectively challenging the Tories, and I was ecstatic when Tony Blair strode into Downing Street on a great wave of popular acclaim, carrying with him the hopes of millions like me

But then the progressive, insidious betrayals began - the gradual erosion of cabinet government, the cynical news management, the toadying to money and celebrity, the marginalisation of dissent, the attack on personal freedom under the law. It seemed only a matter of time until a great defining political issue would reveal the fault line in Blair's government, and it came - Iraq.

As we moved inexorably towards the war, I began to write to the newspapers, especially the Glasgow Herald, and in early March 0f 2003, closed a long letter by saying - 

"Iraq has become the defining political issue of our time, and the questions that will be asked of politicians (and all of us) is - where were you when there was still time to stop it?"

In May of 2003, after the resignation of Claire Short, I again wrote to the Herald -

"There are two kinds of dictator - those who seize power by force and those who erode parliamentary and cabinet processes gradually while maintaining the appearance of democracy. To Labour MPs I have this to say - get him (Blair) out before it is too late for the party and the nation." "Our own Scottish Parliament is now finely balanced enough to permit a debate and a vote on the threat to our egalitarian traditions posed by this man, who appears committed to the belief that the fundamental organising principle of the State is war."

Labour MPs and MSPs did neither. Gordon Brown, (the man who boasts of his 'moral compass') fully complicit in bankrolling the war, did nothing, either from political cowardice or because he endorsed it.
I have carried in my head over all the decades the rationale for supporting the Labour Party, or indeed any political party, inculcated into me in my early youth in Glasgow.

"Be loyal to a political party only to the degree that it shares your ideals. Policies reflect ideals - a party with ideals and no policies is a waking dream, but a party with policies and no ideals is an empty shell.

" Scotland made the Labour Party, and Scotland can unmake it if it betrays its ideals."

Both of these maxims have now come to haunt me in the dog days of Blair's government. Blair, Brown, their supporters, and the 'toom tabard', Jack McConnell, have betrayed my ideals, and, I believe, the ideals of millions of Labour Party supporters and members.  The majority of Labour MPs and MSPs are fully complicit in that betrayal. I reject them and all their works. The Labour Party I knew and loved is dead.

Only one politician of stature asks me to lift my head and look at a horizon that reveals a vibrant, nuclear-free Scotland, an equal partner in the European community of nations - only one politician and one party offers to restore my political idealism - Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party.

The SNP will have my vote on May the 3rd. I have never been a nationalist by instinct, but I believe that it now represents our last, best hope.

May the Labour Party rest in peace among its honourable dead, while Blair, Brown and their cohorts contemplate the charnel house they have made of Iraq, and their destruction of a once great political party.

So how are you voting and why? Join our online debate here

About Peter Curran
Born Dennistoun, Glasgow. Personnel Director - Scottish Brewers 1984-1988, 1988 to date - independent human resources consultant, specialising in negotiating skills.Author of The Ancient Order of Moridura (Nov. 2006) a scientific thriller novel. Married, with two children.Plays saxophones and clarinet and lately, a little banjo and guitar. Musical passion: jazz Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (CFCIPD)

Mark Irvine

Empty promises and equal pay

Action4Equality's Mark Irvine slams an unfair system and trade union conivance in it

Hands up, who supports equal pay? Everyone does, don’t they, because Scotland has come a long way since women worked just for ‘pin money’.

But, if this is true, why are so many women workers still paid so much less than male colleagues? Especially when women have had the law on their side – the 1970 Equal Pay Act – for almost 40 years? The answer is that employers and trade unions have turned a blind eye to widespread pay discrimination for years. This explains why council carers - with highly demanding and responsible jobs - earn less than relatively unskilled male jobs, such as refuse workers and road sweepers.

Whatever they say about an unshakeable commitment to equality, the big public sector employers have been quietly defending the indefensible for years – and the trade unions have been happy to look the other way. In 1999, Scotland’s local councils and trade unions signed an historic equal pay agreement. The proposed new system was intended to pay all workers fairly – regardless of gender, on the basis of real skills and responsibilities – recognising that old, outdated employer/union agreements undervalued and underpaid many predominantly female jobs.

A new approach required non-discriminatory job evaluation schemes - that assessed and scored jobs relative to one another - to produce a fair and logical set of grades and rates of pay - across the entire workforce. But what actually happened was nothing - for six long years. Then Action 4 Equality and Stefan Cross came along - let the cat out the bag by highlighting the big pay differences between male and female jobs – and explaining how to fight back. Overnight, thousands of women workers started submitting equal pay claims – using the courts to get redress.

Collective bargaining had betrayed the very people it was supposed to serve. Predictably, the employers blamed the trade unions and the unions blamed the employers – even though both sides knew exactly what they were signing for at the time. Worse followed. Instead of being honest and acting with integrity, the unions collaborated with employers to keep their women members in the dark – ignored the huge and ongoing pay gap. This duplicity has led to thousands of low paid women workers suing their own trade unions for the lack of proper legal advice and professional support.

Pay discrimination is also rife in Scotland’s NHS. Again the employers and trade unions came up with a similar solution – Agenda for Change – a new grading system, which has been sold as dealing with equal pay, but is nothing of the sort. Instead, Agenda for Change is a mechanism for protecting men's pay and avoiding equal pay claims. NHS pay structures are completely crazy. The equal pay gap has been widely known to employers and unions - since 1997 at least - when large-scale claims were first made in Cumbria.

Cumbria’s claims established that nursing assistants did jobs of equal value to male maintenance workers, but the men were being paid £4,000 more than the (largely female) nurses. Likewise, fully trained and highly qualified nurses earned less than male electronics technicians - medical secretaries less then male painters and joiners. Even senior nurses - with years of specialist training - were paid less than junior maintenance managers. So the people looking after property were paid more than those caring for patients!

Recent events have shown unions up in their true colours. Unions like to portray themselves as champions of equal pay, but collective bargaining has let women workers down – big time. The difference is that people now have a choice – they don’t need to stay trapped inside the secret world of employer/union agreements – a kind of industrial relations ‘black hole’. That’s why so many are prepared to hold the unions to account – and consider other solutions to their problems.
Scotland’s unions have lost the plot on equal pay. Women workers have been betrayed by a tribal male culture, driven by windy rhetoric, wedded to one political party, compromised and ultimately paralysed by its own vested interests.

For the latest news on equal pay visit the Action4Equality website www.action4equalityscotland.blogspot.com