'Independence is bigger than all of us': Sandra White steps down

Now she’s stepping down from the constituency she loves after playing a part in three of the biggest challenges ever to hit Scotland’s political system.

One is Covid, as a member of Holyrood’s Health and Sport Committee. Another is Brexit, as the member for Glasgow’s diverse, multi-cultural Kelvin seat.

The third is the inquiry into the handling of harassment complaints against her old party boss, Alex Salmond, as a member of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body (SPCB).

The impact of all three continues to unfold.

“It has been the most stressful two years,” she says of her reasons for standing down. “Maybe that’s what helped me to make up my mind.

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“I’m still trying to tell people I’m not an MSP any more,” she goes on. “I keep getting invited to community councils. I’ll probably still go.”

White has been in the SNP for, she feels, her “whole life”. She joined up after seeing a sign in the window of a Paisley tailors shop and popping in to have a chat with the boss there, who’d been part of the 79 Group along with Salmond, Margo MacDonald, Roseanna Cunningham, Stephen Maxwell and others.

“They used to say ‘keep your eye on Paisley’, it was quite a hotbed of radicals,” White says.

When she stood in her first election for the council’s Foxbar ward in the 80s she pipped Labour by just 15 votes. Next time round she’d increased her majority to a more comfortable 400.

When she decided to stand down and make a bid for the first Holyrood election in 1999, she approached a talented member about running in her stead. Agreeing, the woman shadowed White for around a year to learn the ropes. White won and that mentee, Lorraine Cameron, is now the Provost of Renfrewshire.

Cameron’s not the only woman White’s mentored – two of the current cabinet were also taken under her wing. She doesn’t want to name the women, but says she’s “a great believer in the grassroots, in working from the bottom up”.

“When I was going out and about to groups I would always say to women, if I can do it, you can do it,” she says.

The Scottish Parliament’s impact on women’s lives is one of the things White is most proud of. She previously worked for women’s aid and has campaigned against lapdancing clubs.

She hails the success of new legislation against female genital mutilation (FGM), domestic abuse, and protections for adults at greater risk of harm and neglect as some of Holyrood’s most important work.

And she firmly believes that was only achieved through the presence of female MSPs.

“Women bring something different to legislation. There are so many things in life which are important. Women bring compassion and empathy – that’s strength.”

White has had to dig into her own reserves of strength and fortitude through the turbulence of the past two years, a period which has “taken out the enjoyment” of parliamentary politics.

READ MORE: Reporting of Holyrood harassment inquiry ignored that it was never about independence

“The unionist parties have a lot to lose,” she says. “It’s become quite bitter.

“In the last five years we’ve got some extra powers. They don’t like that and it has become very personal.

“We have given the Scottish people more confidence, there’s been more coming out about Westminster, people are starting to know a bit more. That’s put a lot of pressure on the unionist parties.

“Look at the vitriol getting flung at us,” she says of independence supporters. “It will get worse. This is just the trailer, not the movie.”

White believes efforts to undermine the Yes movement are behind the many leaks from the parliamentary inquiry into the Scottish Government’s handling of harassment complaints.

The process was punctuated by near-weekly leaking, with even the evidence submitted by the women behind the initial complaints about Salmond given to the Sunday Times newspaper.

READ MORE: Alex Salmond: Yes campaign has been ‘reborn’ after launch of Alba Party

That was supposed to be confidential and, in a statement released through Rape Crisis Scotland, the women said the leak was a breach of the MSP code of conduct and “a violation of the trust we placed in the committee”.

It also, they said, contained “inaccuracies and distortions, which appear to be intended to serve a political agenda”.

White’s cross-party SPCB was called on by the committee to determine whether or not to publish some of the inquiry material. It ruled it was unable to do this as the Crown Office had requested that it remain private.

The committee’s move was, White says, “a cop-out”. “We were under the same constraints as the committee, if we were to publish it we were liable for it,” she says. “That’s why after another tranche it was decided that we couldn’t – as individuals, we’d have been liable for contempt of court.

“The one thing for me was protecting the women. I stuck by that.

“It was hard,” she says of the process. “It was political, but for me it was personal because I knew these folk. You have to look through it and see who are the people who are not being given justice?”

To date, noone has taken responsibility for the leaking, but many have denied it. It was White says, “unprofessional”, “beyond contempt”, “despicable”. Some committee members, she says, treated they inquiry evidence sessions like it was “showtime”.

“I don’t know who leaked it. We’ve got our ideas,” she states.

“We are moving and moving, we are going to become independent. These people can see that. They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

White’s beloved Kelvin is the birthplace of the SNP. The party was forged there in an agreement between the Scottish Party and the National Party of Scotland. It’s now home to the biggest SNP branch.

But the party now faces challenge from new Yes parties, including Salmond’s Alba. Several well-kent figures have moved across, including current and former elected members from councils, Holyrood and Westminster.

“The Scottish people are really quite intelligent,” White says. “We have got a first-past-the-post system in Westminster elections, additional member at Holyrood then single transferable vote with the councils, yet they know what they’re doing with each of these.

READ MORE: Kaukab Stewart: 'I’ve witnessed the heartbreaking impact poverty has on young people'

“We know that the Holyrood voting system was set up so there could be no majority. The SNP broke the system in 2007. There’s no reason it can’t be broken again.

“I read all this about new parties and we have to vote for a ‘supermajority’. That might sound distasteful to some people, but it’s not against the law – there’s no reason why people can’t create a party.

“My big worry is, does it split votes among independence parties? People are really, really suffering out there, we can’t afford to gamble with their lives.

“So many people joined the SNP after the referendum. A number have now joined Alba. Some believe in conspiracy, some don’t like the bills we’ve brought forwards, but there’s division among them as well. I think the SNP will stick together.“

White has thrown herself into the campaign for Kaukab Stewart, who will seek to hold Kelvin for the SNP on May 6.

“I was looking at the bigger picture,” she says of her retirement. “I feel as though it was time for me to go. You start to think about your family – that’s 32 years I’ve been in public service, working late at night. You start to examine yourself. Another five years? No, it’s time to bring new people in.

“Independence is bigger than all of us.”