Loch Lomond is a right, not an opportunity

To help the politicians understand why their actions over Flamingo Land have made so many people so angry, Tam Brotherstone explains what it really meant to a working class boy like him. It mean freedom, peace and tranquility - if only for a night.

When I was a wean I sat and I listened at my Faither’s knee tae a story he telt me about a howf that was dug oot o a banking oan Loch Lomond shore. It had a tarpaulin probably liberated frae the shipyards fixed and draped as a door. It had a stove made by a boilermaker (pronounced Bilermaker) jist like ma faither. Made in the yerds, smuggled oot in bits and assembled on site.

It had a chimney punched up through the roof o the howf vented ootside. It was during the thirties when there was widespread unemployment. Ma grandfaither Charley Brotherston, was a bilermaker and an activist in the National Unemployed Workers movement, going on to be Jimmy Maxton the firebrand member of the Independent Labour Party’s election agent.

Ma grandfaither died at the grand old age of 54. I went on tae work in the shipyards. I was one of the workers who locked themselves in tae the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971.

I tell you this just to let you know the stock I came from. I am not a 'natural' ally of anything remotely Nationalist. Now I don’t even know if that howf actually ever existed but it set up in my childish mind a place where even if you hadn’t a curdy you could experience, for free, the camaraderie of the camping, hiking and cycling fraternity in a place that was yours.

A place where you could escape from the horrors of slum housing, dirty and dangerous workplaces (if you were lucky enough to be working), and spirit crushing poverty. Transported even if only for a couple of nights into a galant highland gentleman entitled to a stick from the forest, a bird from the bush and a fish from the burn. That’s what I and thousands of Glaswegians felt they found on the shores of Loch Lomond.

I never found the howf of my faither's story, I found me.

“ I say either make it your remit or I and thousands of voters like me will make it our remit to find someone whose remit it is.”

When I search through my memory I recall a time when I found myself on a small beach of silver sand wi a twig fire gawn, boiling a tea can made oot a a fruit tin wi a copper wire handle. Ah filled it frae ma Da’s double ended tea caddy, tea in wan end, sugar in the other. The tea was roasting sweet, black and strong and for ten glorious minutes I experienced tranquility.

I would not have called the Queen my auntie. I was master of all I surveyed seated in one of the most beautiful settings in the world. Now I’m not special; or, rather, I’m just like everybody else – absolutely unique.

This is what Loch Lomond means to me. It will mean other things to other people. Over the years I’ve grown increasingly uneasy at the creeping privatisation of the loch by people who seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Young Ross Greer knows the value of Loch Lomond and he’s to be commended for his work in keeping the fate of this priceless public asset in our eyeline. I made a political journey when I first voted SNP. I thought I was voting for a party whose central mission was to return Scotland to the hands of the ordinary working people of Scotland.

So to be told by those that we charged with this task “I agree we shouldn’t sell it but it’s not my remit” I say either make it your remit or I and thousands of voters like me will make it our remit to find someone whose remit it is.

The very thought of this sale is a sacrilege that should never have seen the light of day. We will not be drowned in crocodile tears at its loss. We will not suffer another smothered 'Grangemouth' defeat.

Loch Lomond is not for sale. At any price. To anyone. Loch Lomond belongs to the people of Scotland.