As the deadline for the voting on the local council
elections in Scotland draws nearer, the main parties have really began to up
their ante as many votes as possible.
Any Scottish citizen, say ten years ago, could pretty much predict the
outcome of any local election. Labour here, wee bit of Tory down there and Lib
Dem all the way up there. Up until the turn of the millennia, Scotland’s
politics seemed as though they would never change. The main parties thought that
they would always be elected into the seats they were expected to and basically
thought ‘why bother? It’s never going to change anyways’… or at least they
thought.
The year of 2007 was the real game changer. The SNP, for
many years considered a fringe party, swept into government, much to the
bewilderment of the former main parties. After almost identical results year
in, year out… something had finally changed. For the first time since the
Scottish Parliament was opened, we had a non-Labour government. What could be
the reasons behind this? You may ask. Well, let’s try and find some reasons.
Coming from probably the most die-hard area for Labour
control, North Lanarkshire, I had always been encompassed in a one-party state
of mind. Everyone I knew supported Labour. Everyone in my family supported
Labour. Every one of my teachers and friends at school supported labour. I was
in a paradise for Labour supporters. I grew up in a Labour town, with a Labour
family, with Labour friends and in a Labour country.
From my dad’s time growing up, almost everyone in my town
was working class; they either worked in the foundries, factories or the
railway. Not many people worked in the service or private sector. To everyone,
Labour was the party for them, Trade-unions, fair wages and workers’ rights
were all part of the Labour package. The Tory’s and the Lib Dems were seen as
the party for the middle & upper-classes and the SNP were considered a
strange nationalist fringe-party.
By the time Scotland arrived at my time on earth, the
politics had hardly changed, but the society we lived in had. No factories in
Coatbridge remained, the private & service sectors were flourishing and we
hurtled towards a new millennium. Everyone in my generation in Coatbridge had
come from a Labour family, in a Labour town. Which is precisely the problem,
nothing up until recently in politics had changed, but our society is totally
different from what it used to be in Scotland.
As recent evidence has shown, Scotland has moved forward
into a quite breath-taking future. We have become the European centre for
renewable energy Technology. We are showing signs of lower economic inactivity
and higher employment than anywhere else in the UK outside of the South-East.
The financial sector in Edinburgh is even doing well despite the infamous
recession (and double-dip just recently, thank you ever much Mr Cameron),
accounting for £7 billion GDP per annum. Heck, Scotland is slowly becoming one
of the centres for games development, with Scotland being ranked 3rd
out of the 50 top games development countries in Europe. With companies such as Rock Star, makers of
the well-known GTA franchise.
All of these findings are in stark contrast to how Scotland
used to be. The politics however up until recently were exactly how it used to
be. The Westminster based parties, represent how Scotland used to be, not how
it is now. Which is another reason for independence; we need a system of
Scottish parties, working for Scotland and for the people of Scotland. Not
Westminster parties treating our votes, as votes for Westminster. I would urge
every Scot to vote against the Westminster parties, to show them that our
nation is changing and that simply polishing the apple of yesterday to appeal
to the old sectors of Scottish society will no longer work.
