The Vigil for a Scottish Parliament 30th Anniversary

Category

Library Item

Item no

52106

Title

The Vigil for a Scottish Parliament 30th Anniversary, 10th April 2022

Description

Video recording of the activities held to mark the 30th anniversary of a vigil for a Scottish Parliament which was maintained by campaigners for 1,980 days.

There is one use of strong language during this video.

Artist / maker

Sheach, Jim

Date

2022

Type

Film

Copyright

Jim Sheach - www.youtube.com/user/jimsheach

10 April 2022 marked 30 years since the Vigil for a Scottish Parliament started. A group of vigil veterans gathered at six sites around Regent Road to commemorate the vigil which they maintained for 1,980 days. Democracy for Scotland was a non party political organisation, following the Conservative Party victory in the 1992 General Election they maintained a constant vigil on Regent Road in Edinburgh near to the old Royal High School. This site was seen as the natural home of a Scottish Parliament. The vigil ended following the yes vote in the devolution referendum of 11 September 1997.

Transcription of video - please note, there is one use of strong language during this video:
[Bagpipe music]
I'm Fraser McAllister, I want to welcome you all here. Thank you very much for coming. Even for the folk come from Liverpool. A special one and all the speakers too and it's great to see so many here. We're going to have a treat, we’re going to have a really good time.

And the programme, yes, it is impossible, and that's very much like the vigil. We have six sites to visit, ten vigil stories to hear and at least three songs to sing. So, Dennis Canavan, Labour MP for 26 years, Independent MSP for eight years -

Good evening everybody and thank you very much for inviting me to say a few
words in commemoration of this momentous event. I remember well the aftermath of the 1992 general election. The fourth Tory victory in a row and there was an air of despondency, despair, desolation. It was almost as if there was a massive hangover throughout the whole of Scotland. And all credit to a few brave courageous souls who kept the flag flying and who began this vigil. A vigil which was to last 1980 days, right up until the referendum, that historic referendum result in 1997, the 11th of September 1997 when the people of Scotland delivered a Scottish Parliament.

[applause]

I do not see independence as an end of itself. I see it as a means towards an end, a means towards building a better Scotland, a fearless problem a Scotland that will play its full part in the international community and help to build a better world so when people say what about Indy Ref 2, I say, “Bring it on, bring it on! Let's go for it, let's build that better future, let's build that better Scotland, let's build that better world. Thank you.

[applause]

[Gerry McFeely, Vigil Founder]
It grew from sitting out on the cobblestones with a brazier. So there was a fire on the first and second night and that led over time to more people joining the weeks following. A portacabin which switched to over here. I personally got a telephone line put in. So, it gradually grew but what didn't change was that it was a kind of consensus all the time at the vigil. It was always about agreement and I think first and foremost for me the vigil was a symbol. That was it really, it was that at the beginning, it was that in the middle and it was at the end for me.

[Mike Ferrigan, Vigil Founder]
On the night – [car horn] - see, that's what used to happen all the time at the vigil. That's very true, so yeah, they used to pump their horns and that was just to give us that little bit of a lift and we used to wave to them as they went by. So we came up here and we contacted various media outlets. The BBC came up and filmed it and it was on the BBC in this United Kingdom first item on the Nine o'clock News. That night was the demonstration and a friend who had sadly died who we’ll later move on to, was seen holding a burning Tory poster which would come from one of these lamp posts. The days when you're allowed to actually put posters up on lampposts. The next day, Jerry had stayed that night and some other people had stayed that night in one of their little enclaves in that building there which has now got this wonderful name, what’s it called - the Parliament House? That building there was meant to be the Scottish Parliament, that building right there was meant to be the Scottish Parliament and that's why we were right here.

[Various speakers]
There's such a connection with George Wyllie and the vigil and David, I think, is going to bring that out. And once David Livingston has spoken, Adrian is going to - I hope you're going to recite - read a wonderful extract of the poem ‘Open the Doors!’ by Edwin Morgan.

[David Livingston, Vigil Member]
There's three things that George, we can remember that he contributed to the vigil. First of all, there was the cannon. Now, I've brought an example of that along for you. That was the cannon that stood outside the vigil for oh, a long, long time and it always pointed in the direction of the Scottish Office. The point of that was because it was to represent the power laying not with the Scottish Office but with the people of Scotland. Quick mention of another two Scottish cultural icons of the era who supported us very well, was Hamish Henderson who's someone I think we’re going to talk about later on, so I'll just briefly mention a quick story about Hamish Henderson. I was on duty one night and Hamish and I think one of his daughters came along and Hamish ended up around the brazier just singing, he's singing his songs. But he started off by not letting on who he was, but we knew very well who he was, and we talked about Scottish folk music and he mentioned, do you like any of the old songs? Which gave us our opportunity to say yes, of course we do, and he duly sung John McClean March and of course, Freedom Calling. The last person to mention who was never really actively associated with the vigil was the author, William McIlvanney. Now William McIlvanney was a great supporter of Scotland. He was never actively involved with the vigil except for one evening whereby he was at a literary event in Edinburgh and came along one night rather worse for wear and I was on duty again and he said to me, that is the worst [deleted word] night I have ever been at in my life. Very, very boring. I will apologize on part of the language but that was what William McIlvanney said that night. McIlvanney then spent the rest of the evening with two of us and we all ended up in the Royal Oak for a few beers and he did leave a generous donation which we then put into the collection box. So that's three great Scottish icons of the 1990s, George Wyllie, Hamish Henderson and William McIlvanney and one of the great regrets perhaps, is they weren't all there at the same time.

[Adrienne Murray, Vigil Member]
Dear friends, dear law givers, dear parliamentarians, you are picking up a thread of pride and self-esteem that has been almost but not quite, oh no, not quite, not ever broken or forgotten. When you convened you will be reconvening with a sense of not wholly the power, not yet wholly the power, but a good sense of what was once in the honour of your grasp. All right, forget or don't forget the past, trumpets and robes are fine but in the present and the future you will need something more. What is it we the people cannot tell you yet but you will know about it when we do tell you? We give you our consent to govern. Don't pocket it and ride away. We give you our deepest, dearest wish to govern well. Don't say we have no mandate to be so bold. We give you this great building. Don't let your work and hope be other than great when you enter and begin. So now, begin. Open the doors and begin!
[Applause]

[Music and singing]
[Applause]

[Fraser McAllister]
It’s just over my shoulder, that new building wasn't there three years ago and it wasn't there really until when Boris Johnson came on the scene. It's there for a purpose. It's not entirely obvious what the purpose is because it's empty at the moment, so it's been a mistake. That cost over 200 million. It's called Queen Elizabeth House. Imaginative. There's also me clue in there as to its eventual purpose. At the moment, it's the residence of Alister Jack.
[noises from crowd]

[Lindsay Hodgart, Vigil Founder]
We have to pay a particular respect to those who contributed to the vigil but have since passed away. By the very nature of the vigil, the rule of names I’m going to read may be incomplete and miss some who really should be mentioned here. If that's the case, I apologise for that. So, I'm going to read the names and ask for a minute’s silence after they’re read. I'm sure many of us will possibly also want to, as well as remembering our vigil colleagues who passed away, will perhaps want to remember friends and colleagues who dearly wanted a Scottish Parliament and worked hard for it, but passed away in those frustrating and long decades when it was being thwarted undemocratically. To stand as representatives for these, perhaps, I can mention two people, the Scottish Gaelic poet, Sorley MacLean who died in 1996 passionately wanted a Scottish Parliament and his and my good friend, the scholar of the Scots language, Jim Stevenson, who died just after the election in 1992, also deeply wanted a Scottish Parliament and helped to support me on that. So maybe you'll accept these two people as representing the two linguistic halves of our culture.
So, with our deep respects, our colleagues at the vigil, no longer with us, but I still feel here today in spirit - Helen Allan, Ivor Bernie, Mark Canavan, Calum James McDonald Duncan, Heather Dunlop, Lorrie Dunlop, Nell Dunne, David Hamilton, Hamish Henderson, Gordon Ingles, Nick Simpson, Ken Steele, Lewis Stevenson, Ian Thompson, Gail Tumble, George Wyllie, Willie Young.

[Bagpipe Music – Lee Muir, guest piper]

[Stuart McHardy, Vigil Founder]
One of the things we did do at the vigil was we had a bit of a focus on Scottish history and that's why we're here in a way, because this particular monument was raised in honour of a bunch of gentlemen who were sent out to Australia, transported
because of an event that took place on the 12th December 1792. 200 years later to the day, there was a march here in Edinburgh calling for what they were calling for, democracy. Because that's what they called in their time, reform, but they were just wanting true democratic representation. And the vigil was the gathering point for the 25,000 people who turned up. But by coming here on the 12th December 92 we laid a bunch of white roses in honour of these people and I'm going to ask Gillian [Gillian Grant, Vigil Member] to do that again, to lay a bunch of white roses, at the foot of the Martyrs Memorial in their honour but now 30 years on, also in honour of those that were just mentioned who've passed. And also in honour of all of those who came and maybe only did one two hour shift at the vigil, or two two hour shifts, or once a month they would come, because what made the vigil was what made the guys do what they did in 1792, was the people. Because the martyrs as they're called, the political martyrs were representative of a vast number of people who had joined the friends of the people in Scotland and it's just in passing, it's worth noting that you could join the friends of the people in Scotland for three pence, friends of the people in England was three guineas. That tells you something about the different histories of these two nations and it's time they were separated again. And from here, we have one last stop and the plan was we were going to light our democracy cairn. Because remember that the democracy cairn that's up there on the top of Calton
Hill was the vigil [?]. And it's a sign of the times that things have changed so much. When we asked to do it, it was then a Labour Party and the head of the Labour Party in Lothian was Mark Lazarovich and I was sent to ask him to put up the cairn. Of course, you can, he says, it's the people's hill and it's ay been the people's hill and it's where the rioters that used to express the voice of the people in the 17th and 18th centuries. That's where they always went for a bevvy afterwards so it's well established as a good place. So, we're going to go there but I have to apologise, I'm not going to be raising the [?] fire as was publicised because I've been working with a boredrill [?] all week and I just can't hack it, so we'll have to use firelighters. So onwards and upwards!

[Applause]
[Bagpipe music]

[Tam McGarvey, Fire Basket Creator]
On the day that we come up here, we fastened it onto the top of the cairn. There was a big group of people maybe 30 or 40 people and a piper and we've got a fire going and we lit it. But we had invited Dougie McLean, but Dougie couldn’t make it unfortunately, [??] …. but he came back with Hamish Henderson, and we helped old Hamish get up the hill here and he sang, Freedom come all ye, and he got a stick and lit it and it went up and the fire's going. We're all cheering and brilliant. He was very, very proud he said some really nice things. It gave him a wee bit of hope that the fire was still lit metaphorically and physically. But we're just standing on this, it was much brighter but it was cloudy and as sometimes happens the clouds opened up to reveal a big saltire in the sky just at the very moment you'd want it, you know, it was pure Hollywood. And it was just two jets obviously you know, but it got a big cheer. But it was a wonderful occasion.

[Rico McMullin, Vigil Member]
The destiny march was a march that was designed on the first year commemoration of the vigil and it came from four points – Iona, Whithorn, Arbroath and Berwick upon Tweed to make a saltire, a spidery-like saltire because you can't walk through mountains and that.

[John Orr, Vigil Member]
My involvement with the vigil, I first heard of the vigil back in the summer in 1994. I used to live in Stockbridge and of course, a lot of you all know that the vigil used to do the mini vigils. They were very popular and very successful back in the day as a case of spreading the word as well as getting much needed funds and that's when I first heard of the vigil and that was the Stockbridge festival. It was July 1994, I remember seeing the stall. It was like a wee stall. In our small way we've all contributed to that part of Scottish political history so there we go.

[Fraser McAlister]
Just like to thank everybody who came and everybody who took part.
The cabin went to the Scottish Mental Health Association, the Garden Red Wall in south west Edinburgh. The man that took it phoned me the night before and I thought, oh dear, dear, dear, he's going to cancel. He was half the price of everyone in Edinburgh [?] … What he was phoning to do was to say that I’m doing it for nothing. That was the spirit that was going about… on the last nights, police cars, ambulances, continental coaches, everybody seemed to be in a sense of jubilation.
Not many things last five and a half years and actually work! So I'm going to mention two names, John - John has just come up here, and I'm so pleased that he spoke - John was there so much and Willie and others [??] …, you'll see him in the photographs. Another person you've seen in the photographs is a lady, a very glamorous lady. She's in almost them all and when she's not in them, it's because she's taking them. Does anybody know who I’m talking about? The lady whose name you dare not speak [Laughter] - Gillian -
Slainte! Over to the musicians!
To freedom!

[Applause]
[Music and singing]

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