Blog - Chris Creegan

Inclusive education – the hard lessons from Birmingham

20/03/2019

There are some political moments that you keep coming back to. No matter the sands of time. They resonate. Sometimes for the right reasons, but not always. Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Conservative Party conference on October 9th 1987 is, for me, one such moment. ‘‘Children are being taught they have an inalienable right to […]

Scottish devolution needs cool heads – and social security reminds us why

01/03/2019

Politics can be a fickle business. It’s invariably more volatile moments which make the news at the top of the hour. A life in politics requires an apprenticeship in the school of hard knocks. It means having a thick skin. Credit is short-lived; blame can stick. Less than a year ago, the Scottish Parliament voted […]

Civil society – what next for Scotland?

22/02/2019

When I was 15, I got into a bit of a stushie with my mum and dad. A couple of years earlier I’d become a member of my local church. I sang in the choir and edited its children’s newsletter, Small Talk. It was all going swimmingly until my running coach at school suggested I […]

The love that dared to speak its name

14/02/2019

When I was 12, our English teacher, Mrs Greenwood, asked us to write an extended composition. Our task was to tell a story in three parts — to go wherever our imagination took us and take her, the reader, with us. While other boys wrote tales of adventure and ambition — on the playing field and elsewhere — I wrote about […]

Damian, Me – and Maggie Too

31/01/2019

On the morning of 13th October 1984, aged 23, I stood on my friend Sue’s doorstep in Stoke Newington. Sue was a fellow trade union activist. We were members of a small but determined community, engaged in a struggle for our rights — lesbian and gay rights. I’d gone round to drop off some papers for a […]

How Westminster politics failed us when it mattered most

25/01/2019

Brexit’s place in the genre of storytelling is hard to pin down. Part tragedy, part thriller, part farce — even whodunnit. The Thick of It refrain has become ubiquitous. But beneath its well-worn exterior, a more careworn temperament lurks. For all the gallows humour that gets us through the moment, these are deeply troubling times. In fact, […]

There’s only one Andy Murray

11/01/2019

If he were a football player it’s a chant you’d have heard from the terraces a thousand times over. Tennis isn’t football. Its audiences are every bit as passionate but their enthusiasm is tempered by a different culture. Yet it’s a mantra that has a certain ring to it and in one sense it’s undoubtedly […]

Shortening days, lengthening reflections — and Settling Up

15/12/2018

Just a week to go until the shortest day and winter’s beginning. Somehow, though the year stumbles on for another ten days, for me, it’s the winter solstice that marks its finale. I’m no pagan. In a fragile world, I cling onto my Christian faith, against the odds. For all the fairy lights that bedeck […]