Bannockburn speech

(Text of a speech given at a rally at the Rotunda at Bannockburn on the 21st of June 2014)

Feasgar math dhuibh a h-uile duine.

The 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn is upon us. It is thrilling to see such an incredible turnout. Some people who are not here today, who are perhaps only dimly aware of this event, might wonder why we are here, and what it all means to all of us today. “How can some men hitting each other with sharp objects in a muddy field a long time ago possibly be relevant in this day and age?” they might ask.

Let us remember the reason the events we are commemorating today took place. They happened at a time when the common people of this country had to assert themselves to challenge the claims to rank and privilege of declining mounted feudal elites when those claims were forcibly pressed by invasion, a time when it was necessary to act to “lay the proud usurpers low” and cast off “oppression’s woes and pains”.

When we reflect on Bannockburn in particular we see that the Scots were heavily outnumbered and faced what was perhaps the most effective and best resourced military machine in Europe at the time, drawn up before them to defend privilege. How could this formidable force, the only professional army in Europe at the time, possibly have been defeated?

The answer lies in what forces Scotland could mobilise and motivate for the struggle against it. The adoption of feudal institutions of status and privilege had not been as complete in Scotland as elsewhere and their erosion was more advanced at the time. Defeat would have set the common people of Scotland back generations in terms of their ability to protect their rights. Everyone knew what they stood to gain or lose as a result of the decision reached on the field of battle.

They did not fight because some throne was being usurped. They fought because their rights were being usurped. 700 years ago the mounted elite usurping them hurled themselves upon the massed schiltroms of ordinary people bristling with spears and steadfast with grim determination. 

And at Bannockburn a professional army was beaten by a people's army.

And it was "not for honour, glory or riches" that they fought, "but for freedom, and that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life". Where Wallace inspired, Bruce Won. So when people wonder what this all means, we can tell them, the meaning of Bannockburn is Victory in service to that ideal.

Which brings us back to today. "Those days are past now, and in the past they must remain." These days we gather like this not for military engagements, but to participate in peaceful and democratic processes.

But we can still see the opponents of Scottish Independence drawn up to defend a UK that is used by the plutocratic elites of today as a means of self-aggrandisement, a UK that is an obsolete delinquent post-imperial anachronism being used as a mechanism for usurping worker’s rights with bank bail outs, corporate tax evasion, artificial austerity, low pay, poverty, food banks, inequality, demonization of the poor, creeping privatisation of public infrastructure that took generations to build, like the NHS, illegal wars, and a politics polluted by cynicism conducted in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction based on the Clyde.

Against all that we see arrayed an unprecedented grass roots movement putting boots on the ground, and a New Scotland being built from the bottom up by this army of hope, through an historic level of authentic political engagement that is awakening and transforming our country. And this New Scotland is guided by values of peace, justice, inclusion, tolerance and solidarity, not by the values of the rat race and the fast buck that steer the quill and tip the balance in Whitehall.

This political engagement is happening in places where today’s cynical plutocratic elites never visit, in places abandoned by a Labour Party that would rather see Scotland governed by Tories than by Scots, a Labour Party that will wallow with any bedfellow in betrayal of their principles.The battle today is being fought on the doorsteps. This political engagement is happening in the schemes, where today’s great schiltroms of support for Scottish Independence are gathering.

And the decision delivered in the referendum on 18th September, 700 years and some few months after Bannockburn, will be their Victory.

Alba gu brath!