The Scottish Parliament

'They are being unbelievably parochial and they appear to be prepared to sabotage the best interests of the new Scottish Parliament to avoid its temporary location in Glasgow.' Pat Lally, Labour Lord Provost of Glasgow, 12 th March 1998.

The Assembly Halls

The Church of Scotland's Assembly Halls on the Mound

When Donald Dewar announced Holyrood as the site for the Scottish Parliament, wags claimed that Labour couldn't even organise a piss-up on the site of a brewery. It is true that the Scottish Parliament building on the site Scottish & Newcastle Brewers Holyrood HQ will not be ready in time for May 1999 when the first elections to the parliament will take place.

For some unknown reason, Donald Dewar has ignored the fact that an almost ideal temporary (indeed permanent) site for the parliament existed at the Royal High School and old Saint Andrews House on the Calton Hill.

Instead, Donald Dewar announced that the parliament would sit for the first 18 months of its lifespan in the old Strathclyde Regional Council buildings in Glasgow. Cynics believed that Dewar hoped that the almost inevitable Edinburgh-Glasgow feud following the decision would act as a smoke screen for Labour's problems in Scotland including the row over the knighthood denied to Sean Connery. Unfortunately for Dewar, most Scots did not become embroiled and the feud became a highly personal battle between the Labour groups on Edinburgh and Glasgow Councils with Labour's Deputy Leader in Glasgow threatening Edinburgh colleagues with 'They had better be ready for a bare knuckle fight.'

Computerised view of the future debating hall at the Mound

Dewar then announced that the Parliament would not go to Glasgow after all, but would be housed in the Assembly Halls of the Church of Scotland on the Mound in Edinburgh. The oak-beamed debating chamber housed the Scottish Constitutional Convention and witnessed Margaret Thatcher's infamous 'Sermon on the Mound' after which she was put in her place in no uncertain terms by the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The Assembly Halls are also where the Covenant and Claim of Right were signed.

Don & Hen inspect the work

The 129 MSPs and their staff will be accommodated in council-owned buildings such as former Lothian Regional Council buildings at George IV Bridge, Parliament Square and St Giles Street. The Castle, the National Library and the courts are expected to be used for state occasions.

English Escort for Members of Scottish Parliament

by Teddy Jamieson in the Herald 27 th February 1998

The newly-elected MSPs will file into the Assembly Rooms flanked by a military honour guard drawn from an English regiment whose ancestors marched north with Edward 1, the Hammer of the Scots, during the Wars of Independence in the 1300s.

While the Argylls are stationed at Redford Barracks just across the city, the Black Watch at Fort George in Inverness, and the King's Own Scottish Borderers at Dreghorn, the public duties battalion assigned to add a martial flourish to the parliamentary proceedings is to be 1st Battalion, the Light Infantry, recruited from Durham and across North-east England.