It should have been so different. It should have been a day of celebration.
Today, The Herald on Sunday had been planning a special Climate Strike tribute edition, with the front page, The Big Read, and multiple pages inside, dedicated to the greatest environmental demonstration – and one of the most positive, joyful, hopeful, outpourings of human emotion – the world has ever seen.
The morning after, young people in Glasgow would have wakened up from one of the best days of their lives, exhilarated, probably still adrenaline-fuelled, definitely unable to get the smiles off their faces, only to be told by their parents: “Please stay out of the city. They’re marching again today.”
And bang, Scotland’s biggest city – which only 24 hours earlier had reached heights only rarely seen since the sunshine of the Commonwealth Games in 2014 – comes crashing back down to earth.
Back down to the menacing, malicious reality of sectarian marches.
The city council doesn’t want them any more; the police feel they can’t stop them for fear of stoking even more trouble.
It doesn’t matter what “side” the marchers are on. What matters is that the streets of Glasgow – and of Scotland – surely don’t belong to these people.
Surely they should belong to the thousands who gathered in hope
24 hours earlier. The ones who are campaigning for something better rather than clinging to something worse.
Surely it’s time for us all to decide which Scotland we want to live in.
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