Scotland: Independence Referendum

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to make my maiden speech in this Chamber on such an important subject as the United Kingdom and Scotland’s continuing place within it. By way of preface, may I take this opportunity to thank all the staff here for their unfailing help and courtesy in guiding this rookie through the hoops of admission and introduction? I should also like to thank your Lordships for the warmth of the welcome extended to me, not only today, and most recently by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, but also when my noble friends Lord Sanderson and Lord Selkirk introduced me to the Chamber.

I am Scottish born and bred. I grew up in the Renfrewshire countryside, which in many ways is very similar to the Ayrshire countryside of Robert Burns, whose birth we have just been celebrating. As he encountered the merle, the mavis and the corbie, so did I. When Burns wrote:

“A Rose-bud by my early walk,

Adown a corn-enclosed bawk,

Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,

All on a dewy morning”,

I knew the scent of that wild rose. I had witnessed such mornings. I had a great sense of pride in being Scottish. The highlight of my childhood week was listening to Jimmy Shand and his band on the radio, learning the old Scottish tunes and jigging round the kitchen floor.

In primary school, Scottish history was an important part of our studies, but there was also a wider arena of which I was aware and could not be unaware. I grew up in the very recent aftermath of the Second World War. My father was a Glasgow Highlander in the First World War. I knew from an early age that there was a United Kingdom, that Scotland was a part of it, that these were natural concomitants and that there was nothing incompatible with that partnership and also being proudly Scottish. That perception was reinforced when I went to an excellent secondary school, Greenock Academy. There I was to learn in detail about the history of the United Kingdom: how the Act of Union came about—and, importantly, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, why it came about—and what had been possible down the ages within that unique partnership. Going to school in Greenock was also to see at first hand the significance of the Firth of Clyde as a port and maritime route, an eye to the rest of the world.

Being at school in Greenock was also to understand the strategic importance of that area for the Royal Navy in time of war. Of course, in modern times the nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde has been a British defence facility of major strategic significance. After school, I was to study law and practise as a solicitor in Glasgow for many years before entering the Scottish Parliament in 1999, where I currently serve as an MSP. This autobiographical meander is merely to illustrate that from childhood through my formative years to adulthood, Scottishness and Britishness have been in my very fibre as innate and inalienable conditions.

Just as I feel part of a family within this House, I feel part of a family of nations: proud nations which constitute the United Kingdom, our United Kingdom. When I look at how together we overcame Nazism, how we fought and continue to fight against terrorism, how we exercise global influence through NATO, through being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, through being members of the G7 and G8 groups of countries, and how together we faced global recession and the failure of banks, I see a partnership which is relevant, which works and which is a success.

Threaded all throughout the fabric of that United Kingdom are the people and families of our individual nations. What a strength these threads give to that fabric. The famous words of the poet John Donne:

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”,

could refer equally well to the United Kingdom. We are not defined by some diverse geographical blobs on a map. We are proud of our individual nations, and rightly so, but it is what we constitute together—this union—which is so unique and so powerful. We reach across boundaries; we are not divided by borders. To remove any part of that structure diminishes the rest. It puts the balance out of kilter, so that those who remain are affected every bit as much as those who leave. That constitutional dismemberment imperils the whole United Kingdom.

If I have a plea to your Lordships, it is this. Do not think that the independence referendum in September is Scotland’s business alone. It is not. The whole of the United Kingdom is affected by this debate. Wherever we live within the United Kingdom, if, like me, you value it, then we all need to step up to the plate to keep it. I and my fellow unionists in Scotland need the support of our fellow unionists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We are better together; now is the time to stand together.