Caryl Parry Jones performed a brilliant version of the Proclaimers' Cap in Hand, and Gwilym Bowen Rhys sang a fantastic version of Dylan's Blowing in the Wind. You can watch them all here.
It is hard for us outside Scotland to understand the effect the campaign has had on the Scottish people, but 97% of the electorate there has now registered to vote. The political apathy which has allowed successive Tory and Labour governments to get away with their wars and growing social inequality for so long has been swept away there. Whether slightly less or slightly more than 50% vote for independence on Thursday, the writing is on the wall for the union and what Eurig Salisbury, the Welsh poet, recently called "this crappy status quo".
If this is bad news for the Conservatives, it has put the role of the Labour Party into even sharper focus with its hierarchy defending privilege and the status quo. The gulf between ordinary people and Labour's bosses has never been greater.
We are constantly told that there is no demand for self-government or independence in Wales, but a few weeks ago TV presenter Dan Snow held a Better Together rally on the steps of the Senedd in Cardiff. Less than a dozen people showed up. How different it was in Cardiff yesterday.
What we saw there was not an aggressive, ugly nationalism of the sort we can see stirring in England, but a yearning for a fairer and better society, free from the constraints of an elitist union which has neglected and taken Wales for granted for so long.
The times really are changing.
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7 comments:
And what precisely does a ' fairer and better society' mean?
Higher taxes for the wealthy? Why so, don't they pay enough already.
State education for all? A race to the bottom as witnessed over the past decade.
An improved HNS? But staffed only by Welsh speaking medical staff who are unable to find work elsewhere?
Your vision of Utopia perhaps. Not mine!
Smaller countries of the UK and the regions outside the golden circle of the south-east of England have caught a glimpse of what is possible. There really is a yearning for no more of the status-quo, now that the three main parties have become totally indistinguishable from each other with their broken promises and protection of (sometimes same and sometimes different ) vested interests cuts and they cut no ice these days.
This is why Farage is popular - not because of non-existent policies but because he is "none of the above".
We have glimpsed a different future and we like it much more the present
I wasn't at the rally but did have a good excuse as I am on my activity weekend break in Scotland. Yesterday helping on the Yes stall in Dunkeld. Last night, as the new polls were announced, I was. with many other Yes activists at a fundraising concert in Blairgowrie. Today I'm soon off to Perth to canvass the "holes" in our constituency blanket canvass, so we know on the day where our all support is.
With such a high voter registration and richer people tending to vote no and the working class tend to vote Yes, the Yes side should have it. However, democracy is always unpredictable. This campaign will not be won here, in Dundee, Perth and Kinross [the area where I lived for some year and where I think we will win locally] but in the schemes and projects [social housing] of Scotland's Central Belt, where the campaign to put thousands of previous non-voters onto the register has been successful. Naturally, these don't figure in the official polls and their votes, together with the former labour voters will be the decider.
Anon 8:47 displays the kind of cynical, negative and scare-mongering attitude which has fed the flames of independence in Scotland.
The times are a-changing. As a british citizen I have my own view on the Scottish referendum but it is their debate and their future. Wales may have its aspirations but when I read about the sickening murder of a Scottish aid worker by IS, suddenly a lot of this regional political posturing pales into a less significant background.
The middle east is desperately unstable - we should be looking outwards for solutions as well as inwards at our own fracturing identities.
It was great to see so many people in Cardiff Bay, it did my heart some good to see that my fellow Welsh men and women haven't totally given up on Wales and welsh independence and there's still some fight left in us.
But for all the good will on show i fear that if the WalesforYes crowd, Plaid Cymru and other pro Wales groups don't harness the interest that Scottish Independence offers we are as likely to be fully assimilated into England in the next 15 to 20 years as we are to be a free and independent country.
What do we have Water which is run by Birminghan , Electricity run by the French and Iron by China so lets get in the real world
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