A time for remembrance at First Minister's Questions
- Published
Scottish political leaders chose to wear a poppy at First Minister's Questions
By chance, I happened last night to be in the Craiglockart campus of Edinburgh Napier University.
Now with zealous modern additions, it is the war hospital where a recovering Wilfred Owen met his fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon.
I thought instantly of their work and, particularly, of Owen's famous lines, anent conflict and its consequences.
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil.
To break earth's sleep at all?
Those sentiments close the poem, Futility. I imagine that there is a family in Cults on Deeside who are today observing their immediate world with comparable despair. They have lost their young one.
They too will be questioning the very point of existence.
In such circumstances, some find comfort in faith. Others seek or are offered solace from common humanity, from shared dignity, from a conjoined determination that jagged chaos will not prevail.
Also by chance, both events - the immediate tragedy in Aberdeen, the historic horror of war - came together at Holyrood in a curious yet fitting concatenation.
Our political leaders tendered their condolences to the family of young Bailey Gwynne. As they did so, they were wearing poppies, the flower of war-ravaged Flanders which commemorates conflict and courage.
Some wore the standard scarlet paper poppy, some wore a permanent metal pin. One or two wore the white poppy, symbol of pacifism.
Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens co-convenor, wore a white poppy at First Minister's Questions
But all united in offering sympathy to the "gentle and caring" 16 year old whose life has ended.
The voices were solemn, subdued. But still the words of compassion echoed round the chamber: shock, sadness, sympathy, sorrow. Thoughts and prayers rose to the vaulted roof.
And more. A tentative tiptoe towards context. The First Minister reminded MSPs that tragedies such as the one which has beset Cults Academy are notably rare.
Even as she said it, however, Nicola Sturgeon rightly returned from generality to the particular. Such statistics, she stressed, were of no use whatsoever to a grieving family. Scotland, she said, must be "united in determination" to preclude all such incidents.
As she developed this thread, again an inevitable caveat. Reviews of security, there would be. Lessons learned where possible.
The objective would be to ensure safety for Scotland's youngsters - "as far as any government possibly can".
An acknowledgement there of the limits fixed on our capacity entirely to subdue a troubled, occasionally tragic world, even when that endeavour is motivated by the best of intentions.
Is that a nod towards futility? Quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. As another fine poet noted, we are all diminished by each individual death. But not beaten. Not utterly bowed.
My sympathy to a grieving family.