Friday 24 June 2016

I've had quite a few email and Facebook messages today but I haven't been in touch with many folk, mainly because I'm still in the denial stage of grief. My grief is over losing my status as a European.

In the last referendum on EEC membership in 1975, I voted no, because I didn't think the Brits could ever be good team players. The Brits always seem to need to be in charge. Top dogs. I'm sorry to report I was right. The Brits have never got the hang of cooperation. They also seem to need to refer back to a time that never existed: when the UK was rich, old maids cycled to church in the gentle twilight and the UK was the powerful head of a mighty empire.

I say 'they' because I don't see myself as part of this fantasy.

I lived in Glasgow in the 1950s and 60s, when it was still called the 'workshop of the Empire.' My family worked in factories that made bread and biscuits, built trains at the St Rollux works, ships on the Clyde and cars at Linwood. They were always underpaid, and that was company/state policy because how else could you keep work coming to Scotland? A lot of them lost their jobs in the Thatcher era, with some taking redundancies and others switching over to 'soft' jobs in the service industries, for example as carers on minimum wage. I don't think this can be laid at the door of the EU, although I would like to mention that the EU has made a complete arse of responding to the industrial challenge from China and dealing with the recession that resulted from the banking collapse of 2008. Austerity has not worked and will not work.

The messages that have most annoyed me today have been those that tell me the writer voted to leave the EU but never thought it would happen. We need to do a better job of educating people on democracy: you vote and, if enough people vote the same way as you, you get the result you wanted. You didn't want that result? Then you shouldn't have voted that way. And by the way, I know no one over the age of 60 who voted to leave the EU. I think my generation has more respect for the young people who will inherit our country and will have to try and make a go of things.

One message that has really riled me sadly told me that although the remain camp lost 'at least we won't ever have to go through the fiasco of Calmac tendering again.' I don't know how we encourage solidarity between workers in an age that seems determined to pit one group of workers against another but we could start by establishing some priorities, one of them being to keep control of the multi-national companies that now direct so much of our lives. If they would pay their taxes, we could all live more comfortably.

So what happens next? It's all unknown territory now. It won't matter to me since I'm old but those of you in your 30s and 40s with children need to give some serious thought to what is best for them.