IndyLyf - Silly Wee Women

I don’t normally write down random accounts of my day, I don’t keep a diary, I’m normally too busy juggling being a single parent with working full time and doing the odd bit of gardening, occasional housework and organising cereal. But today, something strange happened.

En route to the bank in Dalkeith I came across a Better Together stall, lovingly decked out in the union flag in the beautiful sunshine. I pondered for a wee bit, but curiosity spurred me and my sister to have a wee gander over and see what the chat was about.

“So do you know how your voting, are you registered?” the lovely lady asked me. I told them I was voting “aye” and I was immediately surrounded by three women who pushed a Better Together leaflet into both our hands. It’s not like I’d not read one before, though I’d tended to stay away from either campaign while I’d been making my mind up to be honest - we had a wee flick through anyway.

Immediately I noticed a few factually incorrect points in their leaflet and since they seemed adamant to ‘change me’ I thought I’d explain a few I disagreed with. Firstly, was the now proven incorrect statement on Tesco food prices and pointed out that they had since clarified their position. They acknowledged that it had been printed too early, so I carried on, it was only one thing right? Next I was told that prices at John Lewis would go up, after thinking for a moment I realised I hadn’t ever shopped at John Lewis in my life, I told them it was too dear, I was a single working class parent after all – “aren’t we all dear” was their reply. Oh ok.

So I carried on, examining the GDP figures of other independent countries that they had so helpfully compiled, after all economics must be important right? According to this leaflet stuffed in my hand I seen that Scotland was listed as the 47^th richest country in the world – a fact from my own research I knew to be incorrect so I asked the baying crowd if they knew it was incorrect. After much explaining that dividing a similar wealth between Scotland’s 5.5 million population and Pakistan’s 179.2 million reinforcements were called in, and another man and woman came to explain that the figures were correct, possibly misleading, but that’s what they had with them so that’s what they were going to give out. They explained that after all it was a forever decision so they just had to make people vote no – despite admitting their leaflets were factually incorrect. We talked about tax credits, the NHS, education, but apparently this had been Labours fault. Well kind of, a few disagreed but they were unanimous that it was ‘just about risk’ and implied that we were maybe just a bit young to understand. They got a wee bit rude after this if I’m honest, I couldn’t concentrate on five people talking at me and we got sick of hearing the words ‘Salmond’ and ‘nationalists’. But we didn’t want to seem disrespectful to the elderly volunteers so we thanked them for their view, politely disagreed and off we wandered.

After about 15 minutes or so and heavy with a couple of bags of shopping for our Mums birthday we settled on a wee bench about a hundred yards away and watched in disbelief as they picked off elderly shoppers and women, everyone else was ignored. Feeling a sense of moral duty, but heavy with a sense of respect we decided to sit with a couple of Yes signs, quietly and silently. We had a Ribena and cracked open a multipack of Timeouts.

We didn’t have a fancy table, and had just grabbed a few yes signs I had lying about in the car, but it didn’t take too long for one of them to march over and accuse us of being ‘disrespectful’ and ‘foolish’. But we’d been respectful, and quiet, and I explained that I respected their viewpoint, and was in fact appreciative of the fact that regardless of voter persuasion I thought it was great they were getting folk involved. But we were verbally attacked for a few minutes more before our lack of reaction bored her.

Roughly ten minutes later, another of the well-spoken group came over “aren’t you worried about my pension?” she barked? I replied “Of course, but I’ve seen the reassurances from DWP so I think that’s pretty much ok, are you worried about my employment prospects or the right for my son to have an education or the impacts to the NHS?” I asked. The reply blew me away – “I don’t care about people like you”.

Offended, and wondering what ‘people like us’ meant, we opened another Timeout. Over time they got a few heckles but mostly respectful, healthy debate, and they even jollied about ‘how brave they were being in Dalkeith’.

What happened next was astonishing; one of the polite, well-spoken elderly gentlemen asked if he could sit and explain a few things to me. I asked if he meant ‘mansplain’, he seemed puzzled but sat down anyway, tipped his hat with his ‘Labour no’ sticker on, opened his wallet and pulled out a twenty pound note - I thought he was about to offer to pay us to go away. “Do you know what this is?” he barked. “Em yeah” we both replied, puzzled. He pulled out a pound coin “Do you know what this is?” wide eyed and with absolute patronising inquisitiveness. Now I can’t remember exactly at what age I realised what money is but I can certainly remember being pretty wee, perhaps even pre-school. I had never been so offended, Sam stopped mid chew of her newly opened Timeout. After asking what led him to think that we somehow weren’t informed about the economic arguments for and against independence, I offered a few reasons myself.. “My gender? My working class accent perhaps? The fact I’m voting Yes?” – “All of that” he said, and further elaborated that what he knew would change our minds so we couldn’t possibly know anything about anything. God love us both for our patience at this point.

I’ve been an activist for many years so I’ve got a decent amount of experience disagreeing with people and accepting the fact that people just sometimes disagree. I’ve also spent many years in fairly senior business circles, so I reckon I’ve got a decent perspective on life, business, fairness and a sense of respect for people that don’t agree with my view on life, politics and anything else for that matter. I’ve never found this problematic, in fact quite the opposite, compromise and respect for other people’s right to disagree with you is a core part of my principles. Our motivation was pure, yet we were vilified, stereotyped, patronised, labelled and blatantly offended.

But the moral of the story, Better Together, is that today you didn’t represent your campaign well, you didn’t even represent your own activists well, many of whom I know, love and are cherished friends – I even spoke to a few for chit chat as they popped over to your stall. However what was inspiring, amazing and down right heartening was the many many people that passed your display of false information and fear and instead gave us the thumbs up. The many people that sat down and chatted about their day, their reasons for voting, sometimes their fears and sometimes their hopes. The many that took away window signs and car stickers. The many women and older people that you so viciously tried to target and fear monger that sat down and related to our desire to keep contributing to our economy, that wanted free education for our children, affordable childcare and an end to nuclear weapons. The many that were scared by you, that took your leaflets and put them straight in the bin as soon as they were out of your line of sight. And my personal inspiration, the woman that was listening to me and Sam chatting while she was on her cigarette break that told us that she’d just finished reading the wee blue book and after her own research had changed from voting no to voting yes.

For me this is completely reflective of the downfall of the Better Together Campaign, and will no doubt subsequently affect the Labour, Lib Dem and Tory vote for many years to come in Scotland. Regardless of the outcome in this referendum, you have managed to disengage, through engaging, a large swathe of the Scottish population, perhaps its why you have not attempted such a level of engagement before. Now whether that turns out to be 40, 50 or 60% of the population - we will see on the 19^th. What I am sure about however, is that never again will Scotland be the silly wee women that we were portrayed to be today; too poor, too stupid, too working class and too wee to strive for something better.