News / “I’ve kept the policy and left the party”
THE SNP’s decision last Friday that an independent Scotland would become a member of NATO has split the party and reduced its majority in the Scottish Parliament to one after two MSPs resigned from the party.
One of them, Highlands and Islands list MSP Jean Urquhart said she barely slept after the two hour debate at the party’s conference in Perth.
Urquhart, who stood as an SNP candidate in Shetland in May 2011, seconded the amendment that tried to block the party from overturning its historic opposition to the “nuclear club” that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
The amendment lost by a whisker – 394 to 365 – a mere 29 votes. There were two more votes on the issue, the final one being carried by a more convincing 426 to 332.
The Guardian’s senior political correspondent Andrew Sparrow said it was the best debate he had witnessed out of five party conferences he had attended this autumn.
Four days later Urquhart and her highlands and islands list colleague John Finnie called a press conference in Inverness to announce they had resigned from the party on the issue, a decision they described as “heart wrenching”.
“It’s not a good feeling I have to say,” the Ullapool politician and hotel owner told Shetland News later.
“I have been in the party for 20 odd years, but I have campaigned against NATO for 30 odd years.”
Her anti-NATO campaigning began in the 1980s when she marched against a military airbase being built outside Stornoway.
She felt at home in a party that shared not only her conviction in an independent Scotland, but was equally set against nuclear weapons and wanted the Trident missile system removed from Faslane outside Glasgow.
On Friday that changed when the party leadership persuaded conference to support its view that more Scots will back independence if they were part of the military alliance, even though they still want nuclear weapons off Scottish soil.
She said that people in the party are anxious that folk fear “the sky will fall in” if they vote for independence in 2014, and that being in NATO would offer them some kind of “reassurance”.
“They feel people might wobble on so-called security and that being part of a bigger organisation is a good thing. I can understand that, but I don’t think NATO is the right organisation.
“Not staying in NATO is, I believe, a quicker route to seeing the end of Trident and nuclear missiles.
“And I have a difficulty with not wanting nuclear weapons on Scotland’s soil and yet being prepared to be part of an organisation that’s willing to see them on other people’s soil.
“This is not the AA or the Brownies that we are talking about.”
As for security, Urquhart pointed out that many academics have highlighted the greater threats of unemployment, climate change and ensuring that people are properly looked after.
Having been elected as a list MSP who only entered parliament because of the strength of the SNP vote across the region, she now feels no obligation to resign from Holyrood.
“I don’t feel I should stand down, I have not changed, I canvassed for the SNP on not being part of NATO. I feel I have kept the policy and left the party.”
She intends to support the government from the back benches on everything but defence and will step up her work with the ‘No to NATO’ campaign.
She is also fully committed to the Yes Scotland campaign for independence, for which she will be canvassing in Shetland next month.
But she will find it hard being outside an organisation for which she has campaigned for more than 20 years.
“That’s a lot of your life, I don’t do it lightly. I have been awake for three nights, I have found it incredibly difficult, but I also feel I am doing the right thing and it is the only thing on which I will not vote with the party from the back benches.”
Meanwhile other party members, such as Jamie Hepburn and Sandra White, intend to carry on the fight within the party against NATO membership.
“I might have done the same thing except for me it’s a bridge too far,” Urquhart said.
Ironically, just prior to the NATO debate she was successful in persuading the SNP to adopt an islands strategy calling for enhanced powers for “strong island communities”.
Her motion called for islands to have greater responsibility for transport policies, local oversight of the Crown Estate, a share of income from offshore energy resources, greater say in a population growth strategy, more integrated island authorities, more power in fisheries management, greater responsibility for language policy, lower fuel duty and more competitive tax levels for local businesses.
While she wants to see Scotland’s islands gaining greater autonomy in an independent Scotland, but will no longer be part of that debate within the party itself.
She will however remain on the parliamentary finance committee, the equal opportunities committee and cross party working groups, such as the one dealing with crofting.
On her blog on Wednesday she thanked everyone who had been in touch to offer support and advice, particularly those in her constituency stretching from Argyll to Shetland who she intends to continue representing for the next two years.
“I look forward to hearing from many more people across the region in the months and years to come and to working with them to make Scotland a fairer, more prosperous and more peaceful nation,” she said.
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