Glasgow's famine memorial stands for so much

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/kevin-mckenna-immigration-good-for-scotland

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My vision of what Scotland ought to look like, independent or not, does not make any outrageous demands. Well, perhaps just this: that one day we will be represented at an international football tournament by men who don't look like they have just finished a shift in a meat-packing factory. I am optimistic, though, that the rest of them can be obtained without too much upheaval.

I simply want Scottish society to be built on the principles of social justice and to possess, at its core, a preferential option for the poor, the vulnerable and the dispossessed. The costs of pursuing this goal would be insignificant when set against the financial benefits of lifting even one in 10 of the young people whom we currently dismiss as beyond redemption by dint of their post code out of deprivation. How difficult can it be to quantify how many people from our least affluent neighbourhoods have obtained a university education in the last 20 years or a vocational course that led to a professional career?

Would it be unreasonable to set for ourselves an objective of increasing this number by 10% by 2020? Alex Salmond has already chosen this year as the deadline by which we must deliver an assortment of eye-watering climate change targets and has set aside £103m to help us do so. I'm sure there is merit in these proposals. They all seem lovely, aromatic and diaphanous and will ensure that Scotland looks clean and smells nice in all its important little places. But we ought only to be worrying about the climate once we have taken care of the poverty and inequality that attack the health of our nation much more than those recalcitrant emissions.

I also want Scotland to welcome, with arms outstretched, all the immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers that we can manage. Our nation has been blessed with a fertile and beautiful landscape, wide-open spaces and an endless coastline that, together with a small population, make this country one of the most sustainable and bountiful on the planet. To keep it to ourselves and close it off to the needy of other lands would be selfish, petty and intolerant. It would also be self-defeating because we need more immigrants to work here and to contribute taxes to help sustain our economy.

The SNP have grasped all of this more than any of their competitors. There was a motif running through their conference in Perth last weekend that suggested to neutral observers such as me that it is becoming the only party in the United Kingdom to make an unconditional commitment to social justice and real welfare. Much of this was fuelled by the crass and foolish words of the Labour leader, Johann Lamont, when she announced her cuts commission by telling us that we must stop expecting "something for nothing". Those words and the SNP's response will be far more significant, come 2014, than the introspective musings on what sort of legal advice the first minister might have taken on an independent Scotland's entry into the European Union.

There was also a little fringe event that took place just away from all the skirling and the tartan malarkey that normally takes place on a conference Saturday night. Organised by the Bridges Programmes, it sought to debate how Scotland intends to treat immigration and asylum in the 21st century. An indication of how critical this issue is to the SNP was given by the fact that Fiona Hyslop, Scotland's cabinet secretary for culture and external affairs, gave the main address and the meeting was chaired by Joan McAlpine, one of the party's rising stars. It's become clear that their party has grasped the importance of these issues to Scotland's future. For the first time in more than a century, the country's population rose this year on the back of inward migration and the nationalists have acknowledged that this will be a key mechanism in helping them reach their population targets.

The attitude to inward migration held by the government in Scotland is very different from that held by Westminster. Immigration as a reserved matter is influenced by the pressures on the south east of England and persistent assurances by the home secretaries that Britain is full up do not represent the positions in other parts of the UK, including regions in England, Northern Ireland and in Scotland as a whole. Already, the shrill and implacable voices of the myopic right in England are urging David Cameron to tighten immigration even further. For the SNP, though, this presents a clear opportunity to develop a fair and just immigration system that will draw many potential supporters to them in Scotland's main centres of population. More importantly, it will help remove from them the stigma of being inward, narrowly focused and protectionist. It will demonstrate that Scotland is a big-hearted and compassionate country that is at peace with itself and the world.

It was also significant that, just a few weeks earlier, a nationalist councillor in Glasgow, Feargal Dalton, was responsible for persuading the city to build a long overdue memorial to the Irish potato famine. Few other events in the last two centuries have made as much cultural, social and spiritual impact as An Gorta Mor on Glasgow and west central Scotland in particular. In every other city in the world where Irish immigrants settled following the famine, there is already a memorial, but this one has the potential to become something special. For it can help to heal the wounds of sectarian division that have marked part of my great city's history. For the memorial will not simply be a totem for the Irish Catholics who died in the famine, but to the Protestants who died in it too, and to the Highlanders who were also blighted by its effects.

When it is constructed, there should be no room for asking why it took so long and making empty demands for apologies. Instead, it should stand for reconciliation and a reminder of how good immigration can be for Scotland.

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