f4f3 | Setting the Scene For The Independence Campaign (Reply)

"No Gods And Precious Few Heroes", a song written by Brian McNeill and sung by Dick Gaughan says a lot for me about separating romance from independence, about putting our shoulders to the same wheel instead of dreaming of Bannockburn and crying about Culloden. There's a streak of Celtic mysticism in Scots a mile wide, to go with the Calvinist coldness and the Caledonian Cringe. And there's also a stubborn, bred in the bone insistence on equality of opportunity, and a belief in achievement rather than ascription (or, as Burns put it, "the Rank is but the guinea's stamp, the Man's the gold, for aw that."). My sort of independence sent the Scottish Brigade to the Spanish Civil War, made Westminster send tanks into George Square in the General Strike, for fear of revolution, and ran the Upper Clyde Shipyard as a worker's occupation decades before Solidarity got the idea.

It's a country I want to see independent for the value it can give to the world. Again.

No Gods, And Precious Few Heroes.

I was listening to the news the other day
I heard a fat politician who had the nerve to say
He was proud to be Scottish, by the way
With the glories of our past to remember
"Here's tae us, wha's like us", listen to the cry
No surrender to the truth and here's the reason why
The power and the glory's just another bloody lie
They use to keep us all in line

For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o the leal
And it's time now to sweep the future clear
Of the lies of a past that we know was never real

Farewell to the heather in the glen
They cleared us off once and they'd do it all again
For they still prefer sheep to thinking men
Ah, but men who think like sheep are even better
There's nothing much to choose between the old laird and the new
They still don't give a damn for the likes of me and you
Just mind you pay your rent to the factor when it's due
And mind your bloody manners when you pay!

And tell me will we never hear the end
Of puir bluidy Charlie at Culloden yet again?
Though he ran like a rabbit down the glen
Leavin better folk than him to be butchered
Or are you sittin in your Council house, dreamin o your clan?
Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land?
Try going down the broo with your claymore in your hand
And count all the Princes in the queue!

So don't talk to me of Scotland the Brave
For if we don't fight soon there'll be nothing left to save
Or would you rather stand and watch them dig your grave
While you wait for the Tartan Messiah?
He'll lead us to the Promised Land with laughter in his eye
We'll all live on the oil and the whisky by and by
Free heavy beer! Pie suppers in the sky! -
Will we never have the sense to learn?

That there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o the leal
And I'm damned sure that there's plenty live in fear
Of the day we stand together with our shoulders at the wheel
Aye there's no Gods