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Glasgow's Poor Are Fighting For a Fairer Scotland

The independence referendum has helped them find a voice.

Easterhouse, Glasgow in 2008 (Photo via)

It is a weekday lunchtime in the Platform café in Easterhouse, about half a dozen miles east of Glasgow city centre and Tony Kenny is trying to tell people about the leftwing Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), competing with the noise of a whirring coffee machine. He has a badge on his jacket reading, “Another Scotland is Possible”, and he’s explaining how an independent Scotland might turn into something a bit closer closer to a socialist paradise, or at least somewhere less unequal. “Independence is nae a panacea but it’s something tae build on. In an independent Scotland we have a chance tae build social justice,” he says. The message is proving popular in the vast postwar housing estates (or “schemes”) that ring the outskirts of Glasgow.

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Although polls consistently give the “No” side a commanding lead, most Scots in working class areas back independence. In Easterhouse, 76 per cent of those surveyed recently said they would be voting “Yes” on the 18th of September. “RIC are targeting people who don’t normally vote or who have been bit by the austerity and the cuts,” says Tony Kenny.

Built in the 1950s to accommodate families decanted from the overcrowded slums of Glasgow’s East End, Easterhouse was initially a dream: indoor toilets, open spaces, light and heat. By the time Kenny’s family arrived in the 1970s, the “scheme”, as such estates are known in Glasgow, had become a byword for urban deprivation, poverty and gang violence.

In 2002, the downtrodden Easterhouse tenements even witnessed an Iain Duncan Smith “epiphany”. The then Tory leader was visiting the area, engaging in a spot of poverty tourism in "Broken Britain". The sight of a used syringe and a teddy bear lying poetically near to each other, apparently moved the then Conservative leader so much that it led him to conceive of the most radical changes to welfare provision in modern British political history. Whether impoverishing disabled and unemployed people by stripping them of their benefits has fixed things, I'm not sure.

While the bleak "IDS walk” has become something of a pilgrimage for visiting media, Easterhouse has changed. There are still some abandoned concrete council flats daubed in graffiti to record clichéd pieces to camera in front of. The old community centre, for years one of the few public services for over 50,000 people, is boarded up. But there are neat rows of newly built semi-detached houses. A derelict old school has been revamped into the Platform café, a modern venue that often plays host to bands from Glasgow and further afield that are actually worth traveling for.

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Liam McLoughlin and Tony Kenny

Despite the progress, everything is not OK in Easterhouse. “As much as I love living in Easterhouse and I’ve got loads of pals and things like that, there are a lot of social problems,” says Liam McLoughlin, a whippet-thin 18-year-old Easterhouse resident and Radical Independence Campaign activist. “There isnae as much gang fighting now but there is still alcohol abuse, substance abuse, you’ll see things like that going on.”

McLoughlin was converted to the Yes cause after giving a presentation about Scottish independence in his secondary school. That was 2011, not long after the Scottish National Party’s landslide victory in elections to the devolved parliament that paved the way for the historic vote on leaving the United Kingdom.Three years on, Liam McLaughlin divides his time between a part-time job and political campaigning. Like many in Easterhouse, he has first hand experience of the coalition’s welfare reforms. His mother, who earns just £200 for a 30-hour week as a chambermaid in a local hotel, recently had her housing benefit stopped.

McLoughlin says that the referendum offers fresh hope to people struggling to get by in one Britain’s most economically deprived cities. “People are starting to realise that this is nae business as usual, this is a chance tae do something completely different. As long as we can get that message across, if we can get people out tae vote this is the kind of area that will win us the referendum.”

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Easterhouse today

Getting people out to vote in places like Easterhouse could be a real challenge. Residents in more affluent parts of Scotland are far more likely to turnout on polling day. In the 2011 Scottish Parliament Elections more than 54 per cent of those registered in well-to-do Edinburgh Central voted; in Easterhouse, the figure was less than 35 per cent.

Not everybody in Easterhouse is convinced that independence is the best way forward. “I’m not sure. There is a lot of people who need help, not just here but across the UK,” says Helen, as she waits for a taxi outside the 1970s-era local shopping centre, which is peppered with empty units and Cash for Gold shops.

No campaigners argue that leaving the United Kingdom will do little to improve things for Scotland’s poorest. “I can understand why people are angry about what’s happening in their community and often in their lives. But changing your passport won’t make us more prosperous; changing your nationality won’t make this a fairer country. It’s not about passports and nationality, it’s about economics and politics,” former secretary of state for Scotland, Jim Murphy, told me. Murphy, a Scottish Labour MP, recently visited Easterhouse as part of an extensive tour of Scotland calling for voters to back the union.

For some traditional Labour supporters, Scottish nationalists are still “Tartan Tories” – northern Conservatives wrapped in a Saltire flag. They’re not too sold on the idea of creating a more equal society based on lowering corporation tax, which Alex Salmond intends to do if he wins.

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Tony Kenny, himself a former SNP member who left the party over its decision to support NATO membership, argues that Alex Salmond and a yes vote are two different propositions. “If we win independence we are not going tae allow the SNP just tae rule as a benevolent Tory party, change the flag and pretty much everything stays the same, pro-big business. No way.” Liam McLoughglin agrees. “There is a genuine grassroots movement here outwith the SNP that are nae gonna disappear on the 18th of September. We are going tae start driving real change. That’s why independence is so crucial because once you get those powers transferred tae Holyrood then you start creating that better society.”

Easterhouse in 2006 (Photo via)

If the current battle is over whether traditional labour values would be better served inside or outside the union, after the independence vote the question could become what happens to the political energy emerging in places like Easterhouse. “If the referendum only achieves one thing, I think that one thing will be that it has engaged people.” says Ian Montague.

Montague came to Easterhouse as a child in the late 1950s. Now a retired school principal, he works with local community group Fare to improve the lives of people in Easterhouse. Fare has had some startling successes: gang culture has almost been eradicated. While most residents still know the territorial names – Young Den-Toi; Skinheads; Bal-Toi Butchers; Provvy Mad Squad – gang related violence has rapidly declined.

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Fare are based in Bannatyne House, a modern, purpose built centre named after the Dragon’s Den impresario who helped fund it. Despite the shiny surroundings, there is a basket in the lobby overflowing donations for the local food bank. Politicians, says Montague, have lacked the drive and vision to deliver what Easterhouse needs most: jobs. But that could change, as people start to find a new voice on the back of the independence campaign.

“The political class are allowed to do what they do because the rest of us don’t engage,” says Montague. “But [after the referendum] I think people could become very, very challenging in a way that they haven’t in the past. I’m hoping that continues.”

@PeterKGeoghegan

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