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Independence is the driving passion behind the political
motivations of the newest MSP in the Parliament, Scottish National
Party representative for Glasgow, Anne McLaughlin, but her earliest
political engagement was the result of more simple economic
factors: "I delivered [SNP] leaflets or I didn't get my
pocket money, so I was brainwashed at an early age!" However,
despite briefly considering voting Labour when she went to college,
Anne "then realised I was only doing it to be rebellious" and
joined the SNP of her own volition at the age of 21. She
cites Jim Sillars' Govan by-election win in 1988 as a significant
SNP victory that got her "really fired up".
As for her own electoral ambitions, Anne is pragmatic. She
didn't have aspirations to be a politician, (although an
ex-boyfriend told her she argued like a politician - a comment
which she took to be both a compliment and an insult!) and
initially stood as a candidate out of a "sense of duty": "you
weren't ever going to get elected, but we needed to give people an
SNP candidate to vote for." For her, "it wasn't being a
politician, it was independence that mattered". Having most
recently worked in the Parliament as a researcher for SNP member
Bob Doris MSP, Anne took her seat in the Scottish Parliament
replacing Glasgow list MSP Bashir Ahmad after his death in February
2009. Since then, Anne has taken an active role in the
Parliament, and sits on two Parliamentary Committees: Public
Petitions and Public Audit, in addition to membership of
Cross-Party Groups on Asylum Seekers and Refugees, Poland and
Racial Equality in Scotland. This obvious passion for equality
issues and social justice are two of Anne's other political
motivations, aside from independence.
Anne's dad was in the Army, and so the family moved around when
she was growing up, but she spent some of her formative years in
Inverclyde, on the west coast of Scotland; first in Greenock, then
attending Port Glasgow High School. It was there, at around
the age of 13, while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, that
Anne became acutely aware of the dire economic situation in the
area. She recalled: "almost every Monday morning it
seemed somebody else in the class's dad had been made redundant
because they all worked in the shipyards. My parents were nurses so
we were fine, but if it wasn't their dads, it was their mums, who
worked in the canteens or the shops or the pubs nearby. Soon there
was nobody in my class … who had working parents, and it was really
awful to watch that, those shipyards shrinking the way they
did. Thousands of them all coming out at lunchtime and tea
time - it's a great sight to watch, and for that just to dwindle,
to next to nothing…"
This sense of injustice and a desire to stand up for peoples'
rights has stayed with Anne, who has been heavily involved in the
case of asylum seekers Florence and Precious Mhango. Anne met
Florence through another asylum seeker that she had been helping in
the constituency, but her involvement really began in July 2009
when Florence and Precious were on a flight ready to be
deported. Anne was on the other side of the world on holiday
in Sri Lanka, but "the Blackberry still worked", allowing her to
liaise with her constituency office and the Mhango's lawyer, who
managed to get them off the flight. However this was just the
beginning of Anne's involvement in the case.
Anne mentioned a few times throughout her interview that
"balance" is often difficult to achieve as an MSP: it is sometimes
difficult to switch off, but the 18th November 2009 was one night
on which she was determined to do just that. It was the 12th
anniversary of the death of her father, and she wanted to take some
time off to be by herself. But when "it all kicked off" with
the detention of Florence and Precious that day, her plans were
changed. "And I felt really guilty at first, you know,
because I thought 'I've not even thought about my dad for 5
minutes' and then I just thought, well you know, my dad was a big
influence on me… he wouldn't let me study social work because he
said I was too soft, and I'd buy a big mansion and have everyone
live with me, but the reason why he recognised that was because he
was like that himself, and I reckoned he would have been happier
with me doing what I was doing to try and protect them."
Florence and Precious' judicial review case was heard in the High
Court in London on 27 May, so Anne didn't have any further
information other than that a decision was imminent, but she did
note that so far, the Home Office have been more approachable than
under the previous UK Government, and she is "very hopeful that
they will review this policy of the UKBA refusing to work with
MSPs" on Scottish cases.
Dealing with asylum policy, an issue reserved to the UK
Government, has certainly highlighted to Anne the frustrations of
being an independence-supporting MSP working within the devolved
system. This feeling of being "strangled" by the restrictions
on MSPs over matters reserved to Westminster is one which Anne
obviously feels very strongly about. This extends to
annoyance about UK Government spending which Anne believes to be
unnecessary: "let's get rid of Trident. I think we've [SNP]
been accused of arguing simplistically. I don't think it's
simplistic - I think it's just simple, you know, that is something
that we're spending billions of pounds on and it's completely
unnecessary, but it's not something we can do as a Scottish
Parliament or Government."
However, perhaps paradoxically, in matters which MSPs do have
control over, Anne's frustrations lie in the degree of influence
MSPs can have: "people try to get justice for themselves,
they can't, they come to an MSP and then 9 times out of 10
immediately it gets sorted, and that I find quite irritating
because most people don't know to go to their MSP or wouldn't feel
comfortable approaching them, and they shouldn't have to."
Nevertheless, although in principle Anne wished this wasn't the
case, she enjoys being able (assisted by her staff) to help those
who come to her: "I've only just realised this recently that … I
love being able to indulge the social worker in me. I love being
able to help people, and I do find that quite often that's what we
end up doing. I do feel that more and more we're providing a
support role to people, in a way that I wouldn't have thought we
would have been doing. … While we've got the capacity to do it, we
will."
Concern for the vulnerable seems to be ingrained in the work
Anne does as an MSP, although as a member of the Public Audit
Committee, she is well aware of the progress being made in
efficiency savings and service redesigns that are being asked of
Scottish public services such as the NHS in order to cushion the
impending spending cuts, and reflects: " I'm not sure the Scottish
Government could give any guarantee that vulnerable people won't be
affected if the budgets are cut much further." However, she
does suggest: "with independence however… that's a different
story."
Citing travel as her biggest passion outside of Holyrood, Anne
enjoys getting away from the hectic schedules of Holyrood.
However, she doesn't like to get too far away, at least in virtual
terms. If she was ever to become stranded on a remote island,
the luxury item she'd most like to have with her is her laptop for
"blogging, emailing, and keeping in contact with the outside
world". Well-known in the online community as "Indygal", Anne
has been a blogger for many years, and now feels almost "obliged"
to continue to blog, as she gets complaints from friends when there
hasn't been a new blog post for a while! Nevertheless, she
feels more restricted in what she can write about now that she is
an MSP. Even before being sworn in as an MSP, Anne found
herself at the centre of media attention due to the content on her
blog (she had taken photos around the Scottish Parliament
building of MSPs during Budget negotiations - something which is
not banned, but caused a media storm nonetheless). Although
the controversy did generate "thousands upon thousands of new
readers" for a few days after the story broke, she is realistic
about her regular readership of the blog: "I think, to be
honest, there's a community of blog readers and they read it; they
read everybody's blog, and I'm not sure that includes people who
don't know how they're voting; I'm not even sure that it includes
people who aren't members of political parties to be honest."
Regarding the wider potential for blogging, she can see that it
might be useful as a political campaign tool if a wider audience
were encouraged to start reading and engaging with blogs. She
also praises the efforts of the Public Petitions Committee, of
which she is a member, for its blog and the other measures it has
taken to attempt to increase public engagement with the
Parliament. However, from her perspective, Anne is content to
be seen as an individual person who blogs, but who just happens to
be an MSP.
An individual who just happens to be an MSP seems a good way to
sum up Anne, who by her own admission had no aspirations to be a
politician. Now that she is in Holyrood, however, with her
keen sense of social justice and fairness, she is certainly intent
on making a difference to those she represents.