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"Meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings!" That's how Mark
Ballard summed up his life as an MSP. His advice to any
budding MSPs out there is to find the trick to surviving dull
meetings, which for Mark is to find at least one item of interest
in the agenda that engages him and to stay awake for that.
Otherwise he finds himself sitting through meetings that are
dealing with issues he knows very little about with the result that
"a lot of the job is thinking why am I here? what am I doing?"
The reason he is here is that, after campaigning for a Scottish
Parliament and then supporting Robin Harper (the first Green MSP to
be elected in Scotland) in the 1999 election, he stood for election
in 2003 but not expecting to be "troubled by political
office". He attributes his election to the Iraq war breaking
out and people using the PR voting system to let their feelings be
known. Being an MSP is all a bit different from when Mark edited a
magazine for a forestry charity that gave him "a deep love of trees
and places in Scotland" and allowed him the privilege "to spend
time with my camera yomping up and down glens".
But Mark has been politically active from a very young age when
he began campaigning against nuclear weapons. After that he
got the political bug and was involved in the Labour Party for 6 or
7 years to continue his nuclear protest. However, he
eventually felt that Labour was not the party for him and, after
getting involved in other single issues, he found his political
home with the Green Party.
His spiritual home is with the Quakers. At the same time
as he got involved with the Green Party he started to go to Quaker
meetings, which was a totally new experience for him. As a child
his only exposure to faith was through religious education lessons
in school: "in the same way that my music lessons at school almost
put me off music for life, RE lessons almost did the same thing
with faith to me". He is still mystified as to what
relationship those lessons had to faith or spirituality.
However, Quakerism appealed to him because it did not dictate that
he had to believe in x or y, which led him to read his Bible and he
says he was surprised by how useful he found the Bible. He
also enjoys the openness of Quaker meetings and likes the emphasis
on "travelling together and learning together and sharing your
experiences on that journey".
Quakerism focuses on listening to the inner voice and to your
conscience, which is something that he tries to do as a
politician. When Mark was involved in protest movements, the
Christian teaching that appealed to him most was the figure of
Jesus as "someone who did non-violent direct action" but still
resisted oppression. Now that he is in the Scottish
Parliament, he is involved in a different kind of politics where he
tries to be more respectful of others, be conscience-led and more
reflective, and to avoid falling into the trap of "they shout at
you, so you shout back".
These qualities are reflected in his political heroes. He thinks
William Morris was amazing in his political philosophy as an early
socialist "on that real tide of Victorian reforming zeal, making
the world a better place" and his art, crafts and wallpaper were
things he created as a political act. A less well-known group
that also inspires him is the Catholic Workers, who took action
against what we now call weapons of mass destruction "as
Christians, in a very non-violent consensual, peaceful manner";
their humility in particular appealed to him.
As a new kid on the parliamentary block, the thing that Mark
finds the strangest as an MSP is "that you are supposed to know
something about everything". He is still getting used to
people shoving a microphone in front of him and expecting him to
come up with a rational argument there and then, when he does not
really know anything about the issue he is expected to comment on:
"I found it utterly bewildering that people had these expectations
of me". He says problems will come if he ever starts losing
the humility to admit he does not know the answer to something and
instead comes up with glib answers.
Another thing that intrigues him about his new job is the actual
machinery of how politics works. "One of the things I quite
liked with my bike is that it is sufficiently simple in terms of
technology so that you can take it apart and put it back together
and make it work". What intrigues him is that, from the
outside, Parliament can look like a slick machine, with politicians
announcing a decision that seems to have been arrived at rationally
and logically, when in actual fact it had a lot more to do with who
the politician happened to being chatting away with in the pub the
night before. "That is what I find interesting, the dichotomy
between the gleaming machinery and the actual people who are
pulling the levers."
Living in India and Pakistan for a while when he was growing up
taught him the importance of building relations with other
cultures, and this is an issue that is very close to Mark's heart,
along with initiatives like Fair Trade. He is also passionate
about the need to share political power. "One of the things
that people would criticise me for is being too nice and fluffy and
green", Mark says, but he does find himself getting irritated at
the way community opinions get completely ignored. He used to
be very active in his community council and he says that despite
the fact that communities know their area inside out, local
authority councils in all their wisdom would just come in with
schemes that either disregarded or did not take into account local
views. What particularly annoyed him was the consultation
exercises they had to respond to where they were only given the
option to tick yes or no, when in reality he could have written an
essay for each question.
As a result of these experiences, Mark's vision for Scottish
politics is all about the sharing of power. He hates the
Westminster model of politics where there are two opposing sides,
where the opposition undermines the government and then, after an
election and a change of governing party, they simply swap
roles. He wants a "model of working together based on support
and developing ideas". He would like things to be done the
Swedish way, where the other parties support the Executive on an
issue by issue basis. This is why he thinks that the Green Party
should never enter into a coalition government, because in a
coalition partnership the smaller party is pressured into
supporting the policies of the biggest party. But he thinks
that PR is a much healthier electoral system, as it gives people
more choice.
He recalled the former MSP John McAllion saying that "his
biggest disappointment in the last Parliament was that there were
only ever seven different points of view and the final three points
of view were only held by one person!".
Speaking about different points of view, Mark thinks that the
churches have a very important role in changing the political
culture by recognising the internal diversity that exists within
churches and putting forward that diversity as a legitimate
response. By doing so, the churches can play a key role in
facilitating multiple points of view and thus prevent people with
extreme positions from hijacking proceedings.
When Mark eventually does get to escape from his MSP life of
meetings, meetings, meetings and more meetings, he likes to indulge
his love of cooking and cycling. He loves to make and eat
Indian food, although "I find that my salary has gone up and my
time has gone down, so I find I am eating more and making
less". It's just as well then that cycling is one of his
other passions!