Letters II: Education, education, education is what we need to win indyref2

At this moment in time there is, to my mind, very little constructive conversation being held concerning indyref2. There is lots of ‘let’s have it now/in 2018/ in five years time’ to be seen on Facebook. On Tuesday night, a colleague and I attended the meeting at which Robin McAlpine spoke. For the second time of hearing, he is the only speaker I have heard who has anything constructive to say on how and what we need to do to achieve success. After a brief preamble, McAlpine asked, “where are we now?”. He stated that we probably have only 18 months of campaigning. Continuing, he said that we will have to, again, avoid the scaremongering or, as was put, the confidence tricksters. One such con-trick was the question of currency. Scotland will need a currency of its own and not shared, and which can be allied to sterling, the euro or any other secure currency in its initial evaluation. But call it a Scots Pound if you like.

We need to be particularly confident in our knowledge of what the country needs to make it a socially just, and fair Scotland. There needs to be an underlying confidence about our information and the way it is imparted. We need to know, for example, why No voters voted No and why soft Yes voters voted No.

The most vulnerable areas will be rural and poor areas where the population are easily swayed. These areas should be profiled; areas such as housing estates situated where they might be remote from urban cities and towns. People in these areas need a focus. They/we have suffered too long under Tory austerity and other betrayals from Labour and the LibDems. What is needed is a story with a plot and an end which they/we can take part in as it develops and become part of the successful outcome.

Politics does not work for us. What we need is a tangible journey towards an independent Scotland. We know the problems of 2014. Now we need to know the answers but which are also the solutions.

Referendums are only won with the best “story”. Headings such as Trump’s “get America back” or the Brexit “win our country back”, these actually worked and won votes. Since 2014, Scotland has already woken up to the need to get its country back.

What we need is a different story, one that perhaps defines an independent Scotland in a few words. Trump and the Brexit movement spread an imagination that won votes. However, while slogans maybe useful, they will need to be underpinned by what makes the story, such as jobs, pensions, immigration and all the rest. Yes, we can march, yes we can wave banners and flags, but that alone will not win a referendum. Our “story” has to get at least 65 per cent of the population together and on the same track.

It was pointed out that the Yes groups nationally should take on this work because we are not about politics, or the SNP, or the Greens. There is a National Yes Group Registry that can be tapped into for this work. We can also meet with other Yes groups within our areas and regions.

We can our share ideas and information. There will be a need for Yes group organisers to put this together. We can form our local Yes groups into specialist areas of research/study such as in a currency, banking, pensions; all the things that Scotland will need to be a working, successful independent country. When questions are asked we can make sure we have a sufficient self-educated knowledge to be able to answer convincingly and to be able to build our majority Yes vote for indyref2.
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife

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Pro-life supporters just want to give people the facts

I AM writing in response to the very biased article by Michael Gray (So-called pro-life campaign groups have no place in our schools, The National, February 7). This article was factually inaccurate and without any biological foundation in relation to the comments about women having control over their “own bodies”.

Firstly, however, I must take issue with his comments regarding St Luke’s High School which is my former school. I set up the first pro-life group in St Luke’s in the 1980s when I attended the school as a pupil. My reason for doing so was that I was a Catholic, brought up in a Catholic family and I accepted the teachings of the church regarding the sanctity of human life from conception. Indeed, Catholic schools are based on the teachings of the church and parents are legally entitled to have their children brought up in accordance with their own beliefs and morals.

In relation to the biology of the unborn child, it is a scientific fact that a baby’s heart first begins to beat at around four weeks after conception and by eight weeks the organs are complete. All that pro-life groups seek to do is to tell the truth to our young people about the development of the baby and to give them the truth about the biology of human life.

The comments regarding the Cardinal Winning Initiative are curious. This organisation provides practical support to women who are pregnant and they empower women to make the choice to keep their babies.

To argue for a woman’s right to choose and then not to recognise that a woman could legitimately choose to have her baby is hardly a choice.

A major flaw in the article is that it makes no mention of the many women who regret their abortion and who realise that the “choice’’ they made was the wrong one.

As for the comments on contraception, more than 50 per cent of all women seeking abortion have been using some form of contraception. Which means two things – one, contraception does not work and two, contraception leads to abortion.
Lesley Ward
Address supplied

IN reference to Michael Gray’s article about abortion, I found it outrageous, horrendously inaccurate and personally offensive and irritating. I scarcely know where to begin with the issues I have with it. I currently study at the University of Strathclyde which you may have heard has had a bad press after a decision to ban pro-life groups on campus. As a pro-life student, I have been subject to alienation and harassment – alongside many other pro-life students – by my student union and therefore take this issue especially personally.

Being on the board of students who are attempting to create a pro-life society, I have personally experienced endless demonstrations of support by fellow students who have informed me that, while not agreeing with my standpoint on pro-life issues, they fully respect my right to freedom of expression and therefore share my opinion concerning the stupidity of our university policy. The treatment I have faced concerning my freedom of expression, my university and this article are examples of the horrendous state our society finds itself in by which anyone who does not hold the majority opinion is heavily criticised and shunned, although this is not the main problem with this article.

The fact it uses two Catholic schools as examples is frankly an absolute joke. Catholic schools promoting Catholic values, imagine that?! I find it hard to comprehend what parent would send their child to a Catholic school and not expect them to be taught about the Catholic Church’s beliefs. The article would be far more appropriately entitled “Catholic schools promote Catholic teachings”.

Michael makes reference to former pupils from these schools who had a problem with pro-life groups – they didn’t choose to go to these schools and be taught about the Catholic Church, but their parents made that choice.

It is simply a case of parents bringing up their children how they please – something which I don’t think anyone can argue against.

I hope you can understand my anger and annoyance at Michael’s article.
Mairi Hughes
Address supplied