The Flag in the Wind
Features - James Halliday
Observations on Scottish Political Life

Home | About Us | Subscriptions | Archives | SNP | Ad Rates | Features | Adverts | Events | Links

• May 2001
  Recall for a few minutes, if you will, the occasions on which you have found yourself brought to extremes of anger when watching a political debate, or a panel-type discussion.
• June 2001
  One consequence of devolution is that Scots are more aware than ever before that the election is about choosing members for an English Parliament.
• July 2001
  All available evidence tells us that our Party will attract much greater support in elections to the Scottish parliament than in Westminster elections.
• August 2001
  What a difference devolution has made, not just to the functioning of our Party, but to our role as individual members.
• September 2001
  A long time ago many members were rather afraid of contesting local government elections.
• October 2001
  There’s not much point in Scots becoming deeply engrossed in diplomacy and foreign affairs, as our capacity to exert any influence is determined by our size and is thus negligible.
• November 2001
  Around 20 years ago our political opponents, and the Media which express their thoughts, brought themselves to recognise and to admit that politics in Scotland were following a pattern different from that in England.
• December 2001
  You’d think that as the year draws to its end all attention would be focussed on the on-going war, whose, extent, duration and consequences are all quite unpredictable.
• January 2002
  An independent Scotland could never dream of equipping itself with nuclear weapons. That fact must be obvious, because any attempt to do so would be financial idiocy.
• February 2002
  A tribute to Dr Robert MacIntyre.
• March 2002
  A man with murder in his heart will find it easier to fulfil his ambition if he has a gun, a fact obvious to all except His Royal Highness of Edinburgh who, memorably, saw equally lethal properties in cricket bats.
• April 2002
  "I don’t care who makes the laws as long as I make the ballads".
• May 2002
  No party’s campaigning efficiency is improved if its members begin to be too wholly convinced by their own propaganda.
• June 2002
  Working for the Party and its causes usually brings content and satisfaction, and I hope you have found this to be so.
• July 2002
  If the Labour Party and Government are to any extent being treated unfairly by the Media, they have some nerve in looking for public sympathy, particularly from Nationalist voters who have long been accustomed to see their Party misrepresented and slandered by the Labour Party and its Press cheerleaders.
• August 2002
  Let’s reflect for a moment or two on the phrase "I kent his faither"; a phrase so often uttered that it has been suggested as a suitable national motto for us Scots.
• September 2002
  Andrew Kerr recently expressed disappointment that no mention has here been made of the joint bid by the Football Associations of Scotland and Ireland to host the European Cup competition in 2008.
• October 2002
  Few people now really believe a word which official spokespersons utter. Distrust and contempt even extend into fiction —just consider how many films and dramas show important characters to be corrupt if they are clever and able, but usually stupid.
• November 2002
  You don’t have to be profoundly read in crime fiction to know that the first alibi to be checked when a murder has happened is that of the surviving spouse.
• December 2002
  Whenever truth is abandoned, politics suffer because then trust disappears and everyone assumes the worst about everyone else.
• January 2003
  Anyone who, in years to come, wishes to know the essentials of the story of the SNP, will find that there are some pretty clear milestones or landmarks in that story.
• February 2003
  Some day someone will publish a step-by-step account of the Conservative Party’s decline from the heights of its Thatcherite dominance to its present unimpressive condition.
• March 2003
  They tell us that our election on May 1st is to be all about war and our involvement in it. Diana’s death, then Kosovo and now Iraq.
• April 2003
  Politicians who wish to be regarded as shrewd have happily clutched at Mr Clinton’s campaign slogan "It’s the economy stupid".
• May 2003
  The election campaign has barely got under way and is enthralling really only to those who are active participants in parties’ efforts.
• June 2003
  Our Media raised a collective eyebrow of mild interest as three Tories made it first past the post.
• July 2003
  The quest for freedom is different in kind from the pursuit of social and economic advantage and every so often Nationalists have tried to devise some alternative means of dealing with this nobler issue.
• August 2003
  As you grow old in this Party you have to learn that the political questions change.
• September 2003
  Why do some people fear independence? Fear of the unknown for a start; not just fear of what things will be like, but fear of the whole process of getting there.
• October 2003
  The party was at its best at the Saturday Conference session when delegates were given the task of ranking the candidates for the Euro-elections.
• November 2003
  Oliver Brown once observed that the surest way to weaken a man's backbone was to pat him vigourously and continually on the back.
• December 2003
  One political party is not necessarily the same kind of animal as another. One party develops and exists in order to advance a cause; to secure acceptance by others of a principle, and, with the growing help of converts, create a community based upon that principle.
• February 2004
  If we are to judge by their attacks on us over the years our enemies seem to assume that Scottish Nationalists must be interested only in Scotland and its own daily domestic round, indifferent to what goe on in the rest of the world.
• March 2004
  You would notice that our First Minister recently claimed that Labour's main political enemies were the Tories.
• April 2004
  As the Euro elections draw ever nearer we can look back on a record of success.
• May 2004
  Some things in political life we just have to grin and bear and the unscrupulous readiness of oponents to rejoice in any of our difficulties is only to be expected.
• June 2004
  So we have emerged more or less unscathed from the Conference (Aberdeen April 2004) which our various ill-wishers were predicting would be for us some sort of calamity.
• July 2004
  Only English/British vanity has prevented us from long ago acknowledging that for each of us it matters far more who is elected president of the United States than who emerges as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• August 2004
  It took devolution and a sort of proportional voting system to reveal the extent of support which our party could command.
• September 2004
  The National Party of Scotland had, from its formation in 1928, a fully coherent political programme, and had required its members to withdraw from any other party.