Unfortunately due to some sort of glitch the wrong speech was added – the previous post was 2021’s presentation. This is the 2022 speech – I’ve removed the previous one as it’s duplicated and here is the up to date one
Sorry Folks – juggling life, study, work and speechifying is complicated as many of you know.
Sisters
It is ten years since Women for Independence was formed by some who are joining us online, some who we have sadly lost and others whose lives have taken them in different directions.
I was remembering recently the feelings that I had after being scooped up into a google group of what I thought were some seriously impressive women, Later, I walked into a kitchen in a town I had never been to, to meet women I did not know and had never met, wondering what on earth I was doing there. Those early days of what would become Women for Independence were some of the most exciting, enlightening and sisterly of my whole life. I found my voice and it was a socialist feminist voice.
Women for Independence changed the Independence debate. Those of us in that kitchen elbowed ourselves into hustings, demanded a space on the couches of the late night political shows, dared the men to talk over us and put them firmly in their place when they did.
After the devastation of the referendum result in 2014, I thought it was over, I thought it was finished. And yet somehow it wasn’t. There was a determination to continue to work – to work as if we were in the early days of a better nation – that nation so many of us had dreamed of. And we have, as a group of national committee members, and as local groups around Scotland – women for Indy members have done exactly that by the bucketload. We have campaigned on national issues, women’s justice, baby boxes, poverty, and local issues hospital closures, school issues, local campaigns where women’s voices were desperately needed. Many of us have put ourselves forward for political office, stood for selection and some have been elected to Westminster, to Holyrood. Its always gratifying to see our sisters on a national stage, yet the biggest thrill for me is to see so many of you sitting in council chambers, in community councils, on Parent councils, working for your people and your communities, supporting each other, being the voice that was so completely missing prior to the last referendum.
And yet despite all this, working as if we are in the early days of a better nation is really tough when we aren’t. In the wake of Brexit and now facing a cost of living crisis that will see poverty rise to levels many of us have never seen in our lifetimes – it is really tough to remain optimistic and determined.
Being part of the UK today is like finding ourselves in a strange, unfamiliar place where no matter how hard we look for it we cannot find the way out. It’s tempting to step back and think its too hard. Its tempting to think we will NEVER get a second referendum and if we do, then there is no way we can win with the media, the might of the British establishment against us and the misery that yet another Tory Prime Minister brings along with his tea chests and packing cases into Downing Street.
And yet Independence is more important than ever. As we look around us at the impact of the hideous policies of this ever increasingly hideous government, more and more it is becoming clear that Independence is the tool we need to do things better. Being part of this Union prevents Scotland being the better Nation that we have all tried so hard to make even with one hand tied behind our back.
In the 8 years since the first Indy referendum women have been at the sharp end of the UK Government’s war on the sick, the poor, those on benefits, immigrants and refugees. Poverty is ravaging our towns and our sisters’ lives. Food Banks have become a well kent sight in our towns, we are seeing charities, churches, ordinary people opening their spaces so people can keep warm, charge their phones, have a hot drink, get something to eat, we are seeing school uniform banks, holiday food programmes. This is our post Brexit union in 2022.
Today, there will be women who want to join this call but cant afford the internet access to do so. On this call there will be women who cannot afford to pay their energy bills, there will be women who do not know how they will make it to the end of the month. There will be women who don’t know how they will feed their children.
Poverty is a political choice. We see that every day. The UK Government has employed deliberate policies designed to make people poorer. The rape clause, the benefit cap, the punitive welfare policies designed to humiliate and denigrate people already struggling. The clearest example of this was the removal of the £20 Universal Credit uplift. The UK government had the choice to do something different but they didn’t – they chose to take £20 a week off some of the poorest people in our society. That was a choice. – They spent billions on dodgy PPE, they gave tax breaks to global companies that make billions in profits and yet they take £20 a week from the women struggling to feed their bairns.
How dare they. Universal Credit is a stick to beat the poor with and they just turned their smug self satisfied faces away and made it harder for people to feed their children and heat their homes. What kinds of people makes that choice?
And the Autumn statement is not really any better. They have told us that hard choices have to be made. We are all going to have to tighten our belts, we are all going to have to take difficult decisions. Well, The people telling us that aren’t the ones that are taking the hard decision not to have their tea tonight so their kids can eat. They aren’t the ones taking the hard decisions not to turn their heating on – In fact many of those making decisions about whether to allow people to eat or heat their homes have their energy bills paid through expenses. So lets see this for what it is – it is US that are making the hard decisions, it is you and me and people like US – mostly women – who are having to decide to cut back on food, on car use on heating our homes, on using hot water. Not this Tory Government – I bet Rishi Sunak has never gone to bed at 4 o clock because its dark, its cold and you haven’t any bloody gas. I bet he and all of his cabinet have never had to sit underneath the window so the milk man cant see you because you haven’t the money to pay him. I bet they have never ever ever cut up an old fleece to use as a sanitary towel or washed in cold water because you cant afford to put the immersion heater on.
The Cost of Living crisis means that we are seeing these things everywhere we look – unless you are in the government. Im speaking to you from here in the Highlands where we have one of the highest levels of fuel poverty in the Country despite producing enough energy right here to meet our own use and more.
There are sisters, sitting in Sutherland, in Ross-hire, in Caithness who cannot afford to put their heating on and yet look out of their windows at windfarms on our hills, look out over the North Sea to oil and gas rigs and off shore windfarms and yet pay some of the highest prices for their fuel. The government says they are helping but £67 a month won’t heat houses in remote areas, where wind driven rain, poor quality housing and no access to mains gas means that the “absolutely not” an energy price cap does not apply and is of no help. The price of smokeless fuel has risen from £10 a 25kg bag in March to £16 a bag today. The price of wood has similarly risen. In the middle of December when it’s not this unseasonably warm, we can go through two bags of smokeless a week, on top of electricity, the electricity we have to use to warm our rooms in a morning when the fire has not been lit, the electricity that powers our cooker to cook our food, helps to dry our clothes and keeps the damp at bay.
Poverty is everywhere we look. In our cities it is more visible perhaps but it exists here in Rural and Remote Scotland too and it’s no less damaging. Research I carried out in 2019 looked at the link between rural poverty and levels of mental wellbeing and showed through some complicated maths that I learnt specially that people living in rural poverty have the lowest levels of mental wellbing.
Unsurprisingly the issues are similar in both urban and rural areas but the effect is perhaps different. In a recent Poverty Week event which looked at some research being done by Glasgow University into women in multiple low paid employment, there were discussions around how women are cutting back by buying cheaper food and cutting back on and car use to make ends meet. It was really interesting but I made the point that women in rural and remote areas often don’t have that choice – if one of your jobs is in a hotel in Lairg and one in a care home in Bonar Bridge then then you cant cut down on your car use. – Petrol is more expensive often in rural areas. Access to affordable food is difficult when the only shop you have nearby is a local shop. And that’s not just about price. I can go to Aldi and buy instant noodles at 32p a pack. The kids love them for their lunches. In our local co op they don’t have that choice – they have Batchelors supernoodles at 90 pence. Tesco sell milk at £1.65 and Co op £1.85. The cheapest pads I can buy at our local co op are £2.20, the same pads are 95p at Tesco.
Rural life brings added costs and added stigma. I spoke to one woman who told me that when she went to her local shop to buy electricity the kind wellmeaning cashier would comment on what she bought every time. Only £3 today? Are you struggling – it must be hard, £20 today -oooh you flush this week. It made her feel scrutinised and shamed and left her isolated and depressed.
Here in rural Scotland our housing costs more, is of poorer quality and is more susceptible to the type of weather we have. But Houses are designed to be heated properly, when they aren’t mould can form, damaging health and the building. After the devastating death of a wee boy – Awaab Ishak – as a result of mould in his housing association home in Rochdale – a place I know well, where I grew up and lived before moving to Scotland – we saw people on social media blame his parents for his death. They should have wiped it away, they could have done better , they should have “Just kept their heating on”. What use is telling people to keep their homes heated when they can’t afford to turn on their electricity or their gas? What use is it going to service a boiler when people have no credit on their gas meters?
The individualisation of poverty overlooks the structural causes and gives the Government a free ride to get away with doing what they are doing just now – nothing. Poor governance, poor housing, racism, all factors in the death of a beloved and beautiful child and yet we hear the Government express regret, but they don’t take any action because ultimately – they don’t care – they too think that poverty is an individual failing.
We hear this so much these days. “we had ice on the inside of our windows when I was a kid and just piled coats up and it didn’t do me any harm”. Just put another jumper on, these are the foods you can eat if you just scrape the mould off. There is no care and compassion from this Government – never big on these in the first place they were dumped, tipped into the pile of Brexit shittiness, thrown into the sea to lighten Britain’s load as she set sail for the sunlit uplands of post Brexit growth growth growth. Except there is no sunlit uplands if you are poor. Just grinding greyness and empty cupboards.
Nothing in the Autumn statement will change that. Women will remain, as I heard said recently – the shock absorbers of poverty. The UK Government announced 600 000 more people will be who are to be encouraged back into work from Universal Credit more of them will be asked to work with a work coach. Make no mistake this will target women – lone parents, carers. They will be subjected to the assault course that is Universal credit, a system designed to kick you every step of the way. They will be required to work more or face sanctions with no corresponding increase in childcare provision or caring support how will women do that? The UK has the second most expensive childcare costs in the world according to the OECD and women, poor women, find their choices reduced as a result of that.
The sanctions that will follow on from this expansion of bullying condescension will leave people without money , without food, heating and dignity. They punish the already struggling and Jeremy Hunt is promising more of them.
This is Scotland as part of the union in 2022.
What can we do about it? Well there is some being done, As much as Westminster deliberately chooses policies to further degrade and stigmatise people in poverty, The Scottish Government has tried to mitigate some of that pain and anguish. It is gratifying to see the Child Payment increased and rolled out to under 16s, I am thankful to see free school meals for all primary children, removing the stigma of the free dinner tickets I remember from my youth and free childcare would have helped me when twice in my life I have had to give up my work because childcare was either unaffordable or – particularly when living in Caithness, unavailable or completely unworkable.
I am personally pleased to see the Scottish Government approach to Social Security instigated by our own Jeane Freeman. I called for its devolution in the lead up to the Smith Commission and having taken part in experience panels and development work through my role with the Poverty Alliance and SPIRIT advocacy.
And yet it is not enough.
If you read the report by the Poverty Alliance and the Scottish Womens Budget Group which came out this week you would have seen how women internalise and blame themselves for the poverty and hardship that they experience. Women are more likely to be poor, have low levels of savings- if any at all, less wealth and twice as likely as men to rely on the social security system. Parenting, caring responsibilities limit the ability of women to take on more paid work leaving many of us struggling to stay afloat in the face of rising costs and inadequate social security payment.
There remains much to be done.
We saw from the Scottish Social attitudes survey that 68% of people felt that income should be redistributed from the wealthy to the poorer, 64% were happy to pay more tax in order for more money to be spent on health education and crucially social welfare so, in Scotland the will is there. We know we need more policies like this and it appears that we want more policies like this but they cannot come without Independence. The Scottish Government is nudging us in the right direction but when the purse strings are tightened by Westminster then that nudging becomes more difficult and progressive steps to fundamentally move Scotland away from the neo liberal, me me me society that the Tories have nurtured since Thatcher, become harder and smaller.
The Scottish Government has thankfully, prioritised the spending commitments they made for people, for the child payment, for mitigating the appalling policies that the UK Government foists on us because remember we have to mitigate them – we have to find the money to meet the bills of the bedroom tax, to ensure that people are paid a living wage, to remove the impact of the disgusting rape clause. These are all helpful to women but there is more that can be done and our womanifesto sets out what we want the Scottish Government to do across a whole range of issues.
Despite this the catastrophic fall out from this Tory government leaves us facing cuts to public services, struggling to offer the pay rises that people rightly want and deserve. Cuts to public Services have the greatest impact on people living in Poverty – this constant battle to spend only what the UK Government allows Scotland to spend is damaging to our society and people here in Scotland. Our inability to borrow to fund anything other than capital projects is a barrier to women’s equality in Scotland today.
There’s a lot of back slapping from Jeremy and his mates and suggestions that this Government is keeping the triple lock and uprating benefits in line with Inflation but they have kept the Benefit Cap, they haven’t increased the local housing allowance which means that more of people’s money will go on Rent and they have reduced the support they have put into the fuel cap. Cold comfort for us all.
That benefit uprating of 10% will not come until April and its already too little. Today Inflation is at 11.1% with some forecasts suggesting it will reach 14% – what help the 10% uprating then? And what are people expected to do over the winter? Food and fuel are driving inflation, the price of everyday staples hitting our pockets. Petrol, Electricity. Bread, butter – my god the price of butter, milk and cheese. But you know Like they say – put another sweater on and scrape the mould off the bread.
So despite the child payment, despite the mitigation of the worst of UK policies Scotland cannot do something different without the full powers of an independent country. And so, we trim a bit here, cut a bit here in order to try to help those who need it the most. To try to help people keep warm and eat, to try to find pay rises for nurses, teachers, railway workers – overworked and carrying the weight of Brexit and the impact of Covid.
Scotland does not have the control of the economic levers to change the society we live in. Talking about economics is challenging. There seem to be as many views on whether we need to raise taxes and cut spending as there are those that say we should cut taxes and raise spending. Experts here there and everywhere.
Taxi drivers in Glasgow (Those experts in everything) where I have been staying during the last few weeks have variously told me that that we cannot stand on our own two feet without holding the hand of the Great British Economy, that we can’t expect to be a success without the roar of Britannia behind us. I say that is nonsense. Look around us, look at the natural resources, look at the tourism, the food and drink, the innovation we have in Scotland. Ripped out of Europe against the expressed will of the Scottish People these things have been damaged precisely because of the self indulgent, roar of Britannia.
I like to think I have more of a grip on economics now than I did 8 years ago when I blogged about it for National Collective. But even with the degrees I’ve acheived since 2012, I can still only find one unassailable truth about the Economy and an independent Scotland. In an Independent Scotland the revenue raised in
and by Scotland will be spent by a Scottish Government on the
priorities decided by the people of Scotland at the ballot box.
That does not happen now and women are the poorer for it. Literally.
This idea that we can only survive because of the largess of the UK Government is not only nonsense, it is dangerous. The UK government have done nothing to prevent people dying from cold and hunger this winter. They have done nothing to prevent hardship and poverty and they have done nothing that will improve the lives of the most vulnerable, the most isolated and the most desperate. Just like with Covid -19 – they are all right Jack and fuck the rest of us. Make no mistake – people will die as a result.
Tied as we are to Westminster, at the hands of a Government that have evidenced that they do not value the human condition through their policies on refugees, their welfare policies, their Complete disregard for the Covid regulations that they devised, we have seen the Scottish Government at least try to improve things for people at the sharp end.
And those of us who are thankful for that, say a wee prayer and watch as the opposition parties in Holyrood stand up and demand that the Government follow whatever ghastly policy being bandied about by the UK Government and find money from nothing, whilst their bosses in Westminster laugh in our faces, week in week out.
I hear people who say ahhh but labour might win and things will be different then. But will they? Will labour bring in a more compassionate and generous social security system – there is no sign that they are thinking about that. Will Labour take us back into The EU, or at the very least the single market and freedom of movement – helping particularly our rural economy, struggling to find nurses, hotel staff and care worker? Absolutely not They are not talking about safer routes for refugees, restoring freedom of movement for EU citizens, in fact the opposite. Freedom of movement is gone and not coming back Keir Starmer said, simply ignoring the need Scotland has for growing our population. Will labour fundamentally tackle the structural issues which see women drowning under the weight of poverty and inequality? I doubt it. There’s is the voice of individualism, it is the voice of conditionality and punitive social security rules. The Labour leadership speaks to England.
But just imagine, imagine an independent Scotland where labour can reflect the priorities of Scotland. Imagine a Right of centre party – conservatives, without the need to second guess what their laughing stock of a leadership are going to mess up this week, what excrutiating u turn Douglas Ross is going to have to complete. We would have infinitely better opposition parties and we need that for a functioning democracy. Independence will be good for both of them. What a shame they can’t see that.
So, As we move towards a second Independence referendum the voices of women will be vital in bringing people with us. We are often the people that our communities trust – sitting in councils, community organisations, parent councils. We should be where women come for answers. I remember holding the first Highland meeting of Women for Independence. It was a cold rainy dark Tuesday night and I had organised a meeting in a coffee shop with Olivia Hamilton, who is sadly no longer with us. We expected to get a couple of people and a dog, probably men at that! We had 30 women join us, we talked, laughed, learnt things and at the end of it one of the women said to me “I thought I was the only one”. Women for Independence are here for all those women – for all the Mhari’s who have nowhere to go for their answers. The values of sisterhood, creating a safe space where women’s voices can be heard and raised continues to be important. Fundamentally, women are the backbone of our society and we will be the backbone of an Independent Scotland, designing the laws, developing the policies and demanding equality.
Independence is only the beginning Sisters – Bring it on.
#IndyRef #YouYesYet #Womenspoverty #womenforindy
can buy me a coffee if you like – I’m extremely grateful always. Thankyou xxx https://ko-fi.com/squidge142
I'mNotAWriterBut... 