Thread by @_Ungagged

Thread... Why I am fighting for Independence.

When I first arrived in Scotland, from Northern Ireland in 1993, I looked forward to voting for politics not poisoned by what Church your family went to. John Smith was the leader of the Labour Party and seemed to be a man who

was leading the party in a more pragmatic centre, but leftward direction. Then came Blair. I was a mature student at Stirling Uni. The floor I stayed on in Andrew Stewart Halls was perhaps, quite unusual, as it was very political and a melting pot of class... but

vastly working class. Represented there were SWP radical lefties, Militant Tendency left, centre left Labour Party, centre right Labour Party, SNP and Tory. I was definitely more attuned to the radical left, but selling papers, shouting slogans on the Link Bridge seemed

futile to me. I wanted radical change, but real change. Not just words.

Debate raged on the left then and in our kitchen, and student bars. The Tory stayed in his room, afraid. The left was represented by Scots, Northern England and Ireland. The centre left by South East

and South England. The Tory was from a Scottish family who had settled in Norwich.

And the blairites began to win the argument in the media... and I had nowhere to go.

During that time, I had a friend who lived in Sighthill. I saw there and across the Glasgow I got to

know, experience that United the working class... a need for change from years of Thatcher and Major. Communities wrecked with poverty and drug and alcohol addiction, violence, and hopelessness. An experience that played out throughout the Central Belt,

the North of Ireland, England and Wales. It was in Sighthill in 1994 that I realised that Scottish Independence was the only way around the neglect (or more correctly, was explained by my friend and her friends and family).

I voted Labour

in 1997, but flirted with Charles Kennedy's social Democratic Liberal Party while I studied for my teaching post grad in Bath (in Bath at the time, there really was little hope for change other than voting Lib Dem). During a holiday back in

Scotland at that time, I went to a local Lib Dem meeting in East Dunbartonshire. At the meeting, one of the Committee members asked for a debate on Section 28. I knew I was in the wrong place and got my coat and left. Human rights are not up for debate (as the

brilliant singer songwriter, @samfendermusic sings in "Aye," "I'm not a funking Liberal anymore...")

When I finished my Post Grad, my politics had no outlet (and I had no time as I had a young son), but in 1999 we bought our first

Internet enabled computer and I got involved in political Yahoo Groups and through one of those, I was invited to the annual celebration of the Declaration of Arbroath. Speaking at it was a woman my wife knew

from working in Childline- Rosie Kane. What I heard there was a message of hope... but also a pragmatic one with policies that could change lives in an independent Scotland (and in the devolved Scotland we were getting used to). I went to

meetings of the new and vibrant Scottish Socialist Party (Sheridan had up until then put me off joining...his insincerity flooded the rooms he shouted in) and listened to amazing working class speakers like Richie Venton, Rosie Kane, Carolyn Leckie, Alan Green,

Alan McCombes, Donald Anderson, and met and spoke with many, many more people who had with the same working class experience as me, and the want for a better, equal world. I joined, and in 2003, the Party returned six MSP's (and we had a superb

West Dunbartonshire Councillor, Jim Bollan).

I'll not go through the history of the SSP, and why I left in 2015. But it was in the SSP I solidified my determination to fight to bring democracy closer to the people of Scotland. I had been a member of @CNDuk from

the age of 14, so I saw independence as a first step to rid the world of nukes- @ScottishCND in an independent Scotland really could create the circumstances in which Trident would be totally withdrawn from the UK and perhaps Europe.

I saw

independence as the only way to ensure wealth was redistributed in a way that made poverty history and in 2005 we enthusiastically and in a large bloc, added a red section to Bob Geldoff and Tony Blair's White shirted Make Poverty History parade

through Edinburgh. The clown army held up G8 delegates and we swarmed and surrounded Faslane, Dungaval and took over the streets and roads of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Auchterarder. Rosie and the new SSP MSPs protested outside the Parliament, disrupted and injected

real poverty busting ideas into that Parliament that had begun much in the way Strathclyde Council had been, with Labour politicians more interested in keeping their privileges and supporting the centrist Blair.

My votes were for a radical, socially just

independence. The SSP campaigned to "turn the Labour Party to the left" if people voted for us, and returned us on the list. People were urged to vote Labour 1,SSP 2. I voted SNP 1, SSP 2.

The SSP were a party who stood for the working class, minorities, feminism and

firmly against Tories and Fascists and took the lead in the fight against the Blair wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We took socialism to the Parliament and onto the streets again.

I was proud to March with my wife and son to the SECC on the day millions across the world

did to urge Blair and Bush NOT to murder Iraqis and Afghanis. And with us were disillusioned Labour members and many, many SNP and Green members. That, in my opinion, was the day the Labour Party in Scotland was dealt a blow that shook it to its foundations and

eventually brought it tumbling to the ground.

Nowadays I am not a member of any party. But my vote goes to SNP and to Greens (the SSP haven't stood in my area for quite some time). And I am proud to see that both of these parties leaderships are fighting to

redistribute the money we are allocated from petite Fascist run Westminster, into our greatest asset the NHS, and to housing, free prescriptions, free dentistry, and housing amongst many other things that really have radically changed Scotland, and

set us apart from Tory wrecked England. I really hope that English voters cast off their irons soon. As we will in the next couple of years. Of course, equity cannot be delivered with what the SNP/Green administration can do with the incomplete lever set the Scottish

Last section attached in tweet above as screenshots (Twitter would allow me to add anymore when I was first posting).