The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Three weeks to go, an appeal to fellow citizens of Scotland: Karen Hendry

The Point marks 21 days to go till the referendum with a magnificent seven appeals to undecided voters from both rank-and-file activists and leading figures in the YES movement.

 

Karen Hendry: single parent and anti-bedroom tax activist

 

The road to independence and how I got here.

Referendum, independence, you can, you can’t but what about plan x, y and z? The build up to the referendum has been one of the most exciting but exasperating things I have ever witnessed and one that will stay in the memory of myself and many others for all different reasons. With around 20 days to go I’m sitting reflecting on how I came to be a yes voter, a yes campaigner and all I can boil it down to is history and my own life experiences.

I was born in 1977 into a single parent family, my mum worked full time and we lived with my gran and papa. My papa was a miner who had survived a lifetime down the pits and lost his brother in the Kames disaster. Politics was always a lively affair in our house with the old we vote labour never Tory Tories are bad and when the miners’ strike came around I seen this with my own eyes. School friends suffering as their daddies were on strike. We were wee, but we knew that something wasn’t right with what we were hearing at home and seeing on the news and the curses and oaths when “her” (Margaret Thatcher) was on the telly. These things shape wee minds and stay with you through life.

We watched our communities struggle, people leaving to find work, people being out of work and the spark going from our neighbourhoods as everything slid there was no money no hope no sign of things getting better.

We were lucky as my papa had retired just before the strike and my mum worked nightshifts in Blackwood Brothers carpet factory in Kilmarnock so we at least had the pension and her wages other families weren’t so lucky.

Then the word came that Blackwood’s was paying people off and my mum was one of them. It was the only job she had ever known, and was trained for, but it was cheaper to get the work done abroad so the workforce was being cut. This came at a time when my gran’s health was declining and she needed help and support to manage day to day living so my mum became her carer at a time when carer’s rights and allowances were meagre (bit like today really for the service they provide and the money they save the government and their own families). So she became my gran’s carer and later my papa’s carer. The work of carers paid, unpaid and through carer’s allowance is generally unrecognised for the work they put in regardless if its family or not.

From this wee snippet of my life you can where my path to independence started. We are your average working class family and one that when the Westminster government wants to wage war on the poor are the first to suffer.

I left school and worked in Falmers jeans for 4 years until it started paying off people as the work was being done abroad cheaper and the brand was being sold to Matalan but not the workforce.

2001, I had my daughter who I have raised myself for 13 years. You know, one of those sponging single parents who worked and studied full time from college right through to graduating from university with an honours degree. And this is where I saw that we really could change the rotten system we had and that the chance of a fairer more equal society was there with independence.

Rewind to last year and we see the introduction of the bedroom tax and the eruption of the demeaning Atos assessments. This hit my mum a double whammy. Her home had 2 spare bedrooms (the home incidentally which had been rented for over 50 years by her parents) and then Atos declared her fit for work by seeing if she could lift her arms, never mind the other health conditions and the 4 page prescription list!)

I ended up being the vice chair of the Scottish anti-bedroom tax federation and also protested alongside Glasgow against Atos. The stories you heard from people about the persecution and humiliation they had been put through would have made the quietest person angry.

The pressure put on the Scottish government by the Scottish anti-bedroom tax federation led to the bedroom tax being mitigated in Scotland for the financial year 2014/15. This was a massive victory for us and showed that people power does work and can influence government. Unfortunately this is still ongoing in England and Wales, the media doesn’t show protests etc, that have been happening there around austerity, many people in Scotland have no idea how shielded they are compared to our English and Welsh cousins.

So why am I a yes voter? I’m a yes voter because I believe we can build a fairer society which doesn’t treat its poor, disabled, lone parents, low earners like a burden. I took advantage of the free tuition here and earned an honours degree, the first person in my family to ever have went to university I want that option to be available to my daughter when the time comes 6 years from now. I want to be a part of building a new modern nation where everyone has a chance regardless of age, colour, physical ability or financial position.

I want to be part of a modern nation where government listens to its people and their views on policies and consults with groups or individuals before ideas become policy. I don’t want to be stuck in a time where the poor, disabled and marginalised are blamed for everything that is wrong in society, where food banks are considered the norm, where we are fed lies and nonsense to blame everyone apart from the ones who are in control.

But most of all I want my daughter and future grandchildren to grow up and flourish in a country where no one is left behind.