Interviewing Gary Stewart of The Society of William Wallace

700 years on, do we know enough about the very people
who fought for Scotland's nationhood?

This weekend celebrations have been taking place in Bannockburn to mark the 700th anniversary of one of the most important battles in Scottish history where Robert the Bruce defeated the army led by Edward II to secure Scotland's place as a nation.

The timing of this anniversary has come at a point in Scotland's current history where the country within just a matter of weeks will be voting to decide whether it becomes an independent country. Could we be on the brink of freedom from the union in just the space of a couple of years? History may feel like it's repeating itself in a different and, arguably, a more amicable kind of way to an extent, but the whole timing of the celebration of this anniversary with the referendum in September is notable.

The history of Scotland is enough to fascinate anyone who holds a curiosity behind how Scotland has travelled through time. There is even much debate over whether enough is taught in schools to generations of new Scots about their own country's history.

Earlier on this week, I picked up the phone and had an enjoyable and engaging conversation with Gary Stewart who is part of a group named The Society of William Wallace. I wanted to know a bit more about the group and what they do.

"Basically The Society of William Wallace is there to promote Wallace," states Gary succinctly. And he went on to give a range of examples of where the group goes and what the group talks about in order to enlighten people about William Wallace's life and what he did for Scotland.

In recent times, the group have been pushing to get a memorial for the Battle Of The Bell O' The Brae built in Glasgow, "We are trying to build a monument in Glasgow to a little known battle that Wallace was involved with in 1297 in Glasgow just off Duke Street and that has taken us six years and planning permission has now been passed and we are just trying to get the authority from Glasgow [City Council] to allow us to build the monument there.", Gary explains.

But it isn't just Glasgow where they are seeking to have a memorial built as Gary went on to explain, "One of the things that we do in conjunction with that is we also built the monument in Falkirk for the Battle of Falkirk. We obviously look after that and we obviously funded that within ourselves. We are also involved with the Stirling Trust which are looking to try to build a monument in Stirling."

Gary also took me back to 2005 which was the 700th anniversary of the death of William Wallace. He also enlightened me about the Wallace Letter and there is an excellent section about it on this page from The Society of William Wallace website.

As the interview went on, I wanted to explore the broader picture with Gary. The rest of the interview was an opportunity for him to personally express how he felt about how much (or little) we know about our own country's history and what the referendum means for Scotland's future. It is worth noting that Gary's opinions are his own and not that of any organisation or group he represents.

"Do you think we as a Scottish nation do enough to celebrate William Wallace's life, his legacy and our history in general, particularly with regard to that period of time when Scotland was very much fighting for it's status as a nation?", I ask him with curiosity. He responded without ambiguity, "No I don't think we do."

He rues the fact that Scotland as a country doesn't do enough to embrace it's own heritage and culture. He also states that the country is gifted with a lot of things such as the country's history, it's heroes such as William Wallace, shortbread, kilts and tartan and that these are things that Scots shouldn't run away from, "Every other country in the world would die for that," said Gary with passion.

"No matter where you go whether its Moldova, Macedonia or Slovenia, they know you are Scottish because you've got a kilt on. And that to me is something that we should be embracing. We shouldn't be trying to get away from that. We should be embracing that and incorporating that into the marketing campaign from a tourism point of view." continued Gary.

Forgive us both for going into other areas which some may argue isn't directly related to the whole work of The Society of William Wallace, but there was a reason for doing so. The whole purpose of the group was to raise awareness of the life of one of Scotland's most notable heroes.

"If I am speaking to somebody that is willing to help us achieve what we want to achieve and you can see that same passion as what we've got then I think that makes a massive difference," states Gary. He also said to me that the group he is part of is a non-political group and does not participate within politics.

Gary and his group have had to work extraordinarily hard in order to secure the memorial in Glasgow and in other places and he expressed to me some of the frustrations in terms of making substantial progress in a swift period of time, "It has taken us six years to get a monument built in Glasgow to William Wallace," he told me. Six years is not a small amount of time by anybody's standards.

We ended our conversation taking about the legacy of a particular Hollywood movie which has arguably raised awareness about the man that Gary and his group work hard to make people aware of. Braveheart, which starred Mel Gibson, is much talked about to this day for bringing light on his life and for altering Scots' own perceptions on identity. Surely everyone, regardless of their identity or politics was affected by the success of the movie?

"When that film came out, I would say 20% of the population in Scotland knew who William Wallace  was. I would probably hazard a guess that wouldn't be far off it. After Braveheart came out, you are probably looking at 99.9% of Scottish people who knew about William Wallace.", quite a transformation some would say and this was Gary's analysis of how Braveheart impacted upon the awareness of Wallace. There is no doubt that the movie had a major impact. Despite this however, there seems to be still much work to do, although the movie's success has played a major role.

For the purpose of this article, I wanted to specifically focus on William Wallace and Scotland's fight for independence in the early 14th century. As far as my own opinion is concerned, we as a country need to do far more to appreciate and know about our ancestors who fought for our nationhood and the work Gary and his team do is crucial in many ways and worth knowing about.

And we should also ask ourselves as to why we don't know enough about William Wallace and the history of Scotland during those crucial years when the whole existence of the country was on the line. It was a defining moment for Scotland and it's a part of the country's history that must never be forgotten.

It's about time I had a TV show of my own and I need you to help me!

Last night, a bright idea came to life in my head. After publishing a video yesterday about the Edinburgh Trams, I decided that it was about time I produced and presented a TV show of my own.

You'll probably notice at this current moment that I have an intention of starting a new video podcast up for my website. And that's what I want to go ahead with, but hope to make it more like a television programme that can be viewed online. It'll most probably be available through my YouTube channel.

I genuinely don't mean to sound arrogant in any way, but I'm feeling pretty confident about starting up and sustaining such a project. And I think it comes at a very interesting time. My ambition is to ultimately make it onto television as a broadcast journalist, but with a view to keeping an open mind to presenting other types of programmes. Also, STV Glasgow TV started up last week, STV Edinburgh TV launches later this summer (not getting my hopes up though, it's tough to get that vital break for starters) and later tonight I intend to attend the Royal Television Society Scotland Awards in Glasgow.

I'm really looking forward to the award ceremony tonight, but do realise that I might be a little lonely to start with. But hopefully it'll be a great event where I can network with many like minded people and where I will learn a lot of new things about what is going on across the television industry north of the border. God willing, it should be a lot of fun!

But going back to the television show idea that I had, I need your help. Although I have initial ideas in my head for what I want to do, I need to think of a few certain things to help get me started.

Firstly, I need a show name. "The Anas Hassan Vodcast" is just not a catchy title, nor has it got much style. I have a couple of ideas in my head already, but I want to know what you think. If there's more than one suggestion then I could consider running a poll to see which is the most popular.

Secondly, I need a good scope of what kind of things I want to cover on my programme. For a start, I want to cover a wide range of topics (not just news, but other things that get people talking) and do it in such a light hearted and not so heavy manner.

And thirdly, I need to create some sort of a realistic studio atmosphere for my show. I'm on a shoestring budget of next to nothing so don't expect anything spectacular, but any suggestions are welcome. And I do have a pretty basic idea of how I want things to look although no doubt my vision will change over time as I develop my ideas further.

Please contact me with a message to my e-mail address: officialanashassan@outlook.com - your input is welcome. Finally, please check out my new video which is at the start of this blog post where I take a look at the new Edinburgh Trams service - lots and lots of views already despite being up for less than 24 hours. Amazing! Thank you!

Three cheers for the arrival of STV Glasgow on TV

Myself standing in one of my favourite parts of the world at
Pacific Quay, Glasgow.

This week, the arrival of the brand new STV Glasgow television channel marked an important milestone within Scottish broadcasting.

For the first time, a Scottish city has a unique TV channel of it's own that reflects the news, life and people of it's own area. You will not be at all surprised as to what tone I'm going to adopt for this blog post.

It's fair to say that times have been rather regressive in recent years as far as the broadcasting industry is concerned north of the border. Yet there is hope that the tide is changing direction for the better. The main thing that impresses me so much about this new television channel is the emphasis it places on serving it's main audience. The viewer knows without any doubt that Glasgow is the main focus and it's headline programme, The Riverside Show, reflects this point really brilliantly.

It's main presenters David Farrell and Jennifer Reoch symbolise what the programme and channel is all about. You can hear it in their accents and see it in their personalities. I cannot confirm for certain whether they were both born or brought up within Glasgow, but I can certainly say that the Glaswegian character in both of them is well and truly alive. It's also worth adding that Storm Huntley and Colin Stone have proven to be excellent members of the presenting/reporting team on the main STV Glasgow evening programme.

The only drawback I can think of at the moment is the lack of new programming that is available. I was expecting more than the main evening programme and the football phone-in that follows. But to be honest, I'm being a bit harsh here. It's only early days and already there seems to be a diverse range of programming from comprehensive news coverage throughout the day to the return of Take The High Road (although it's past episodes of the famous soap) and that football phone-in with Peter Martin and Alan Rough. There seems to be something for everybody.

Viewer and channel must understand each other and, despite only launching on Monday, STV Glasgow gets the people of the city. I'll conclude by saying that I am seriously impressed with how the team who produce The Riverside Show manage to fill in two hours of on air time with a diverse range of guests, features and stories. That is not an easy task to fulfil, particularly if it is for a programme that goes out daily.

So a huge congratulations to each and every one of the team at STV Glasgow and STV for making this new channel work well within it's early days - I wanted to name every single member of the team, but I'm fearful that I'm going to miss somebody out so I'll just lavish my praises upon everybody! Long may this new channel stay alive within our TV listings.

How can we increase the number of people in the media who come from an ethnic minority?

I am working hard to start a full time career within the media
in Scotland.

On Monday evening’s edition of Scotland 2014 on BBC Two north of the border, comedian Lenny Henry gave a thought provoking interview about ethnic minorities and the media. He passionately feels that television isn't representative of the population of the UK and wants money ringfenced for programming that enables more diversity.

My heart is with him as far as his sentiments are concerned, but I've developed my own independent perspective on what the issues are and how best to address the under representation of ethnic minorities in the media. And for this blog post, I will focus on Scotland in particular, as this is the area where I want to spend my career within.

I believe, ideally, that the media of a country should reflect the current population of the whole area and it is disappointing to think that there aren't many TV and radio presenters who come from an ethnic minority background in Scotland at the moment. But the question really is - why there is a lack of diversity?

We must be careful not to start playing a blame game of some kind towards the people within the media who make decisions on who they hire. Editors and producers choose people on the basis of both talent and someone's continued commitment and willingness to develop a media career. Regardless of who the person is and where they come from, it is more likely for someone to make it if they continuously persist in making it on screen or on the airwaves and fully set their sights on a broadcasting career than for someone not to put in any effort at all to make things work.

I do not favour quotas, because I think using such a mechanism for recruitment is a patronising way to hire people. Furthermore, would I really want to be picked for a job on the basis of my ethnicity rather than my talent? Absolutely not. It brings me absolutely no benefit nor the satisfaction in knowing that I genuinely was talented enough to deserve being appointed into a particular job. We are all the same no matter who we are, no matter where we come from and no matter what we look like and that should never change.

As far as ringfencing money is concerned in order to boost the low numbers of people from an ethnic minority, I think this is a viable idea and should be taken seriously. Any money that is invested into improving the diversity of programming available to viewers is a good thing and should be considered. I don’t think viewers will be against the idea and in fact I think they would welcome it if it resulted in a reduction of the current inequalities that exist at the moment.

I had a conversation with a representative from a prominent organisation within Fife about the lack of ethnic minority representatives within the media a few weeks ago. From our constructive exchanges, it became apparent to me that one of the main ways in which positive change can and should happen is for individuals and groups within communities to be enlightened and inspired to look at the possibility of seeking some sort of greater involvement within the media. This can happen by prominent individuals and organisations connecting with them in some way or another to introduce the idea of getting involved in radio or television (and even print, let's not forget that platform).

You can certainly count me as a member of an ethnic minority due to my Middle Eastern background. It could be asked as to how I personally feel knowing that there are very few people of an ethnic minority on television or radio in Scotland, especially when also considering that this is an industry I want to get fully involved in for the rest of my career. You might expect someone like me in my current situation to feel put off by that fact, but frankly I’m not. Meritocracy generally prevails so why should the current situation intimidate me?

I'm continuously promoting myself to convince someone out there that I've got what it takes to be successful within the broadcast media and although knocking on that life changing door can be repetitive, it has to be done. One day that major door could open for me and if it does then I hope to inspire others. For now, I must continue to cheer myself on.