Religion continues to prevent this Scots Nat from joining the SNP

In June 2016, the United Nations published a report upon Religious Observance (RO) within publicly funded Scottish Schools, calling for the Scottish Government to recognise the right of senior pupils to opt themselves out.  The Scottish Government have responded by completely disregarding the wishes of the body representing the global community.

RO is any ritual act of religious practice, whether that be group prayer, religious-based assemblies with pupils singing from the Church of Scotland Hymnary, enforced visits to the local church, visits from the local minister, or even saying grace before school dinners, all of which take place in some Scottish schools, with some of them being quite common. Parents do have the right to opt their children out of these practices, yet few are aware of that right, which usually appears in school handbooks, and is barely mentioned. Even when pupils are opted-out, they can tend to be treated like pariahs, and given practices to do which are more akin to punishments than any scholastic alternative. In one case I am aware of one opted-out pupil was forced to sharpen pencils while the rest of her class attended RO. It is also quite common for opted-out pupils to be told to stand in a corridor while RO takes place.

The Scottish Secular Society, of which I am a member, once petitioned the Scottish Government to change the opt out of RO to an “opt in”, where schools would have to contact parents and seek signed permission for their children to attend RO. The Scottish Government completely dismissed this very popular request.

In their report on RO, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child states “The Committee recommends that the State party repeal legal provisions for compulsory attendance at collective worship in publicly funded schools and ensure that children can independently exercise the right to withdraw from religious worship at school.” The Scottish Government have likewise dismissed this report, from no less an austere body than the UN, completely out of hand. In a letter to the Humanist Society of Scotland, the Scottish Government stated “There is no […] statutory right to withdraw afforded to children and young people.”

For a government which can be so progressive, and one of whose key policies is Getting It Right For Every Child, that sounds very much to me like “Ye'll dae as yir tellt.”

I admire the great many things the SNP administration in the Scottish Government have achieved and are achieving for all who live here in Scotland. I support most aims and goals of the SNP, I believe them to have policies based solidly within social conscience and responsibility, I have always found SNP representatives to listen to the Scottish people and act accordingly in their best interests. I consistently vote SNP. I have admired Nicola Sturgeon for a very long time (to the point she may be disturbed at the number of photos I have of her at public events), and in her I believe Scotland could not ask for a better First Minister. With her intelligence, experience, diplomacy, compassion, and toughness where required, I honestly think Nicola Sturgeon is the best First Minister Scotland has had since we achieved devolution in 1999.

However, for me there are some things which are a line in the sand. And where the SNP are concerned, it is this continual pandering to religion.

For a political party, I have come to notice that the SNP appears to have a high number of practising Christians among their membership, from ordinary members, right up to Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP). Although I am an atheist myself, I am the first to champion the right of all to freedom of religion, thought and conscience, a right which is enshrined by both the UN and the European Union. When political representatives have an abiding faith however, that can and does often throw up problems. Where they have to choose between those who elected them, their country, or their god, then there is always the danger that they will choose the latter. One need only look to the many religious zealots in public office in the USA to see the reality of that fact.

And you may think that cannot happen in Scotland. No? Think again. In 2013 a scandal broke at Kirtonholme Primary School in South Lanarkshire, when it was discovered that primary schoolchildren were being given creationist literature by a US-based evangelical Christian club. In the wake of this the Scottish Secular Society petitioned the Scottish Government to be given clear guidance on the teaching of Biblical creationism – the literal belief that the earth was created in six day, 6000 years ago – in publicly funded Scottish schools. While this petition was going through the Scottish Parliament, John Mason, SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, lodged a motion that evolution cannot be “proved or disproved by science” and calling for children to be made aware of “differing belief systems”. Yes, you did read that right; John Mason did indeed call for science to 'disprove' – effectively prove a negative, which science does not do because it is an exercise in futility (disproving is not falsifying, which is a valid and solid part of the scientific method). In the event, John Mason's facile motion was thrown out, and the Scottish Secular Society petition was passed, effectively outlawing the teaching of creationism in Scottish schools.

But it need not be the political representatives of a party that can cause me to question them. It is disturbing in the extreme that the SNP continue to accept funding from Brian Souter, co-owner of the Stagecoach bus group. Brian Souter is deeply religious, and once headed up a campaign to retain some extremely homophobic legislation visited upon schools across the UK. Clause 28 (Section 2A in Scotland) was introduced by the Conservative government of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1988 and enforced that schools "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Not only did this odious piece of legislation make it effectively illegal to even mention homosexuality in schools, it also prevented gay and lesbian pupils from coming out, and made pariahs out of those children and young people with same-sex parents. Tony Blair's Labour government sought to repeal Clause 28 / Section 2A in 1999, and the “Keep the Clause” campaign got going to try and fight this repeal.

Brian Souter supported a poll by Keep the Clause to the tune of £1 million, a postal ballot asking members of the public whether it should be repealed or retained. In the event, only 31.8% of valid votes were returned, with 86.8% showing in favour of retention, to 13.2% in favour of repeal. While Souter tried to claim victory however, a mere 31.8% of valid votes had been returned, the poll was a private affair (the Electoral Reform Society refused to touch it), and much of the information given was out of date.

More disturbing is the way that the Keep the Clause campaign influenced the Ayr by-election of 2000. In the first Scottish Parliamentary Election in 1999, the Ayr seat had been won by Labour by a mere 25 votes above the Conservative opponent. The following year sitting MSP Ian Welsh resigned to spend more time with his family, triggering the first Scottish Parliamentary by-election. In the run-up to the by-election, Keep the Clause campaigned heavily in the area, and bought up billboard space. In the event the Ayr seat fell to the pro-clause Conservative candidate John Scott by a landslide, with the SNP in second place, and Labour beaten into third place. Brian Souter, again much of the bankrolling of this, later boasted that he had influenced the by-election. Some SNP / independence that; crowing that he had helped get a Tory into power. But then, that's what happens when the religious seek to influence politics; they don't care of the other politics of whoever supports their bigotry, so long as someone supports it.

However, for Brian Souter and his Keep the Clause cronies, it was a hollow victory. Section 2A was repealed by the Scottish Government in June 2000, and Westminster repealed Clause 28 in 2003.  Jack McConnell and Tony Blair did have some uses after all.

The issue of RO in Scottish schools and the SNP position upon it is not only a disgrace, it is a constitutional enigma, and one which could ultimately come back to smack the SNP firmly in the face. For a start, when we say RO, let's be clear here, we are speaking Christian worship, no other faith, for the simple fact that Christianity is the majority faith in Scotland. And even then, when I say Christian, I mean mostly Church of Scotland (with the Roman Catholic Church coming second in Scotland's publicly-funded RC schools). It just so happens however that the Church of Scotland was disestabalished in 1929, and as a result Scotland has no established state church. By comparison, the Church of England is the established state church of England, and yet senior pupils in publicly-funded English schools have been able to opt themselves out of RO since 2006.

There is of course no written constitution in the UK, but what the future holds could very well change matters in Scotland. The very raison detre of the SNP is of course independence for Scotland. Within that goal, the SNP have stated their vision of an independent Scotland which is a member of the European Union (and the people of Scotland have strongly stated their wish to stay within the EU, which the First Minister is negotiating at time of writing), and with a written constitution, based upon the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Interestingly enough, as I previously said, the ECHR enshrines the human right to freedom of thought, religion, and conscience. Therefore, if the end goal is as the SNP state, then enforced RO in Scottish Schools would contravene the ECHR, and presumably the secular constitution of an independent Scotland, thereby making it illegal to enforce RO upon children against their wishes.

Religion is a very contentious issue in Scotland, and has been for over a thousand years. This is the country which Saint Margaret shook up from being “loose Christians” to strictly adherent to Rome for 500 years, to the point that Scotland was known as “The Pope's special daughter”. Then in a short space of time the Reformation made this the most Presbyterian country in the world (as our brand of Protestantism remains the most fierce in the world), which became the government for the next 300 years. However, the last vestiges of Scotland's theocratic past are passing away with time. We are now a multicultural country, which means we are also very much a multi-faith country, while the 2011 census showed that 37% of Scots now consider themselves to be of “No Religion”; an increase of nine percent upon the 2001 census, second only to Christianity, and showing that atheism is firmly upon the increase in Scotland.

Yet this is not just an atheist issue. As Scotland is a multi-faith country, this can only mean that there are children of other faiths being forced into Christian RO. Now, some may not have a problem with that, but as I said before, just how many of the parents are aware of their children having RO forced upon them? How many of them are aware that it is heavily Christian-based? I've no doubt many Christian parents may dismiss this. Okay, then would they be happy were their children forced to worship under another faith? Bloody right they would not be. Only a couple of years back many parents in Dalkeith, Midlothian, withdrew their children from a school visit to Edinburgh Central Mosque (this visit was purely educational to learn what Islam teaches – not enforcing it). Why then should they expect any different for children of other faiths, and no faiths?  This is one place where the SNP administration in Holyrood is most certainly not "Getting It Right For Every Child".

Likewise, I am not asking for, nor ever would ask for, RO to be removed from schools against the wishes of parents who wish it for their children, or for that matter school pupils who wish it for themselves.  Enforced secularism is every bit as unjust and odious as enforced RO.  France, which is taking too heavy a line upon secularism within schools, in places banning anything which could be construed as religious, is the proof of this.  But enforcing one religion upon all against their wishes, and effectively punishing those who are opted out, is an outdated remnant of the days of Presbyterian theocracy, which should have no place in our multi-faith and increasingly atheist and secularist modern Scotland, which has no established kirk.

I will continue to vote SNP, I will continue to support them, and our wonderful First Minister, for I believe that they and they alone are the only party which truly represents Scotland and has the interests of all her peoples at heart. Likewise, with the prospects of a second independence referendum now very firmly on the cards, I shall campaign for Yes Scotland, just as I did before the 2014 referendum. But as long as the SNP continue to cow-tow to the Kirk, to accept money from a homophobe, to ignore the guidance of no less than the United Nations, and their Holy Wullie MSPs put their faith before their constituents and their country, they shall never have me as a member.

Nicola Sturgeon may wish to take note that I am not the only pro-independence atheist and secularist who feels that strongly on this issue, and the SNP are doing themselves no favours by refusing to take a more secular stance.