Greens urge Scots to pick new anthem

Published on Tuesday 16 November 2004 01:04

THE Scottish nation was urged yesterday to get involved in The Scotsman’s campaign for a new national anthem.

The call came at a meeting of some of the key players in the drive to find an alternative to God Save the Queen.

Chris Ballance, a Green MSP who has tabled a parliamentary motion calling for a new anthem, said every Scot should have a say through a nationwide consultation exercise.

Mr Ballance also called for the Scottish Parliament’s enterprise and culture committee to hold an inquiry to produce a shortlist of potential songs.

The committee inquiry would see a variety of interested groups giving evidence to MSPs about which anthem they would prefer, he said.

Once the committee had reported, the matter would be debated in a full session of the Scottish Parliament and MSPs would ultimately choose what the new anthem should be.

"We are a national parliament and God Save the Queen is wholly inappropriate for Scotland in that context," said Mr Ballance.

"If nothing else, it is inappropriate for the verses that celebrate the fact that the king is crushing rebellious Scots."

Robin Harper, the co-leader of the Greens and a former guitar tutor, is keen for an entirely new song for Scotland to be written. "I would love to have an anthem similar to the Swedish one, one that marks the extraordinary beauty of Scotland’s landscape and natural habitat, and celebrates the values and spirit of Scotland’s peoples," he said.

However, at yesterday’s meeting, the case for Robert Burns’ A Man’s a Man for a’ That was made by John Archer, a former director of Scottish Screen, and the writer Carl MacDougall.

The campaign for a new anthem was launched following a ruling last Tuesday by parliamentary lawyers who agreed that the choice of anthem was a matter for the devolved administration. Previously, officials had said it was a matter for Westminster.

The decision by the parliament’s lawyers came about because of the tireless work of an Edinburgh pensioner, George Reid.

He has been lobbying the parliament for months to find out who has the authority to decide the anthem.