Peoples's Priorities vs IndyRef2
Dignity in Dying seems to be the settled will of the Scottish people these days, but instead of devoting time and energy on an issue that commands widespread public support the Scottish Government yesterday published plans for a new referendum on independence.
Dying with Dignity (19/03/21)
Recent opinion polls suggest that a big majority of Scots (almost 90%) now support legislation on assisted dying with appropriate safeguards in place to protect the vulnerable.
The issue certainly seems to be the 'settled will' of the Scottish people, yet receives far less attention from our politicians than independence, for example.
Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel Mayflies is a heart-felt plea on dying with dignity
The issue certainly seems to be the 'settled will' of the Scottish people, yet receives far less attention from our politicians than independence, for example.
So why is this the case when Holyrood is proclaimed as a people's parliament which acts upon the people's priorities while respecting the views of others who might disagree?
Despite the evidence of widespread public support the Scottish Government has failed to act, preferring instead to let individual MSPs like the late Margo MacDonald to show what political leadership on the subject.
Canada passed 'assisted dying' legislation a few years back and Spain has become the latest European country to support the policy in principle.
So while we wait for Scotland's political leaders to show some resolve here'e an excellent article by Dani Garavelli which appeared in The Sunday Times recently.
Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel Mayflies is a heart-felt plea on dying with dignity
Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel is a tribute and a heartfelt plea on dying with dignity
The end to O’Hagan’s novel is how he would like to have witnessed his friend’s final chapter - Photo ALAMY
The end to O’Hagan’s novel is how he would like to have witnessed his friend’s final chapter - Photo ALAMY
By Dani Garavelli - The Sunday Times
At the end of Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel, Mayflies, the main character, Tully — who is based on his lifelong friend Keith Martin — runs on to a football pitch, “the champion’s smile” of his younger days on his face again. Tully is at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, surrounded by his loved ones, preparing to die. At 51, he is much too young, but at least, the smile implies, he is doing it on his own terms.
Keith intended to end his life at the Dignitas clinic, too. He had been making plans, with O’Hagan as his wingman. But his oesophageal cancer progressed too quickly and, instead, he endured protracted pain and trauma, dying in Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on September 29, 2018.
In Mayflies, O’Hagan wrote his friend a better final act; the one he believes he ought to have had. “There is a restorative power to fiction,” he tells me from his home in London. “Sometimes, it leads the way and offers a moral picture of what life could be. That’s what I wanted in my book: for readers to see how it could be for Tully — holding his wife’s hand, winking and waving to his best friend, as he runs out, under his own steam, with a sense of freedom and decency.”
O’Hagan had supported assisted dying for many years, but his experiences with Keith — a friend he had gigged with, ligged with, chanted CND slogans with in 1980s North Ayrshire — sharpened his beliefs and his determination to see it become a reality in Scotland.
Now — two years on — he has agreed to become a patron of Dignity in Dying Scotland, a charity campaigning for a change in the law, so those who are terminally ill aren’t forced to travel abroad in order to take control of their final hours.
“I am not an overtly political animal,” O’Hagan says. “I think it is better for novelists to take in all positions and try to be equal to all. But, in anybody’s life, there are one or two subjects where you want to stand up and say: ‘This is crucial’.” Assisted dying is his.
Before the pandemic, one person every eight days was making the journey from Britain to Switzerland to end their life. “The cost of that, the anxiety of that, the uncertainty of entering into a foreign medical system away from your loved ones, away from your social-care network, is not only taxing, but tortuous,” O’Hagan says.
“We also have terminally ill people trying to kill themselves by means that are not safe; people in lay-bys on motorways, trying to end their lives because the searing pain and the desperate uncertainty is too much for them. They should be able to die on home ground, here in Scotland, well looked after by Scottish medical expertise. This is not just a philosophical question, it’s a question of social and medical wellbeing. It’s a civil right; a humanitarian cause.”
O’Hagan’s decision to become a figurehead for the assisted dying campaign north of the border coincides with an upsurge in support. Recent polls suggest almost 90 per cent of Scots are in favour. The views of the medical profession appear to be shifting, too, with more than half of UK GPs and six in 10 doctors now said to believe the BMA should end its blanket opposition.
Holyrood has been cautious. The last attempt to put assisted dying on the statute books — the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill — was defeated by 82 votes to 36 in 2015. But with other countries, such as New Zealand and Spain, introducing assisted dying acts, and high-profile figures such as TV presenter Prue Leith, publicly backing the policy, Dignity in Dying Scotland is convinced change is possible. A cross-party group on end of life choices has been established, and a fresh bill to legalise assisted dying is expected to be brought in the next parliament.
O’Hagan believes Keith’s experience provides a powerful illustration of why it is necessary. Had the option of an assisted death in Scotland been available to him, he is sure his friend would have taken it. “On one occasion, he was walking down Glasgow’s Great Western Road for a treatment, and he said to me: ‘In a decent place, such as we are and should be more, this would be the day I said goodbye to the world.’
“He realised he had the kind of galloping cancer that was unstoppable and, yes, he could prolong his life for a certain number of months with the use of therapies, but he asked, as a good member of society, what the benefit of that was. It was taxing on the health service, and deeply traumatising to him.”
Keith underwent three rounds of therapy. In late summer 2018, he was best man at O’Hagan’s wedding. But, soon after, he took a turn for the worse and the author and his new wife, Lindsey, cut their honeymoon short. On the day he died, O’Hagan was in Suffolk judging a young writers’ competition. When told his friend had hours to live, he jumped in his car and pointed it north; at Gretna Green, he received a call telling him he was too late. Later, he held Keith’s hand as he lay cold in his hospital bed. “He was peaceful at last, and dignified,” he says. “I only wished he’d been able to reach that dignity with the assistance he craved, and in his own country too.”
O’Hagan made the decision to travel to Switzerland anyway. It was a pilgrimage of sorts; an atonement; a promise not quite fulfilled. “I wanted to take myself through the journey for him,” he says. “It was like driving the hearse past the house where [he] used to live; a way of tipping your hat to somebody’s deepest wishes, to their humanity.” But it was also an opportunity to put any doubts he had over assisted dying to the test. He spent time with the Dignitas director, asking difficult questions. “He answered me point by point.”
Last October, O’Hagan was forced to confront his own mortality when he was hospitalised with Covid-19, an illness he says makes you realise how close to death you are. He has no doubts now. As patron of Dignity in Dying Scotland, he is eager to put his weight behind the new bill. An important part of the campaign will be to ensure those who oppose it are treated with as much respect as he received at the clinic. “We need to understand their fears and worries,” he says. “We must address intellectually, emotionally and with great care, the points they make.
“Let’s not allow this bill to fail by not being able to answer them. Let’s encourage the people who need persuading that there is a great, blinding series of truths to which they might prove hospitable now because in other countries dying with dignity has become the standard, and in those countries they do not see a great abuse of the system.”
O’Hagan is on a crusade. What would Keith make of it, I wonder. There is another passage, towards the end of Mayflies, where a shop owner tells Tully’s friend James: “With luck, you have time ahead of you. And the future will still involve him.” Is his campaign an attempt to keep his friend involved?
“Oh yes, Keith is marching with me,” O’Hagan says. “And friendship itself is a kind of campaign. You link arms over certain things. You keep going forward, you keep making the argument, and you know you have your buddy beside you."
At the end of Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel, Mayflies, the main character, Tully — who is based on his lifelong friend Keith Martin — runs on to a football pitch, “the champion’s smile” of his younger days on his face again. Tully is at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, surrounded by his loved ones, preparing to die. At 51, he is much too young, but at least, the smile implies, he is doing it on his own terms.
Keith intended to end his life at the Dignitas clinic, too. He had been making plans, with O’Hagan as his wingman. But his oesophageal cancer progressed too quickly and, instead, he endured protracted pain and trauma, dying in Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on September 29, 2018.
In Mayflies, O’Hagan wrote his friend a better final act; the one he believes he ought to have had. “There is a restorative power to fiction,” he tells me from his home in London. “Sometimes, it leads the way and offers a moral picture of what life could be. That’s what I wanted in my book: for readers to see how it could be for Tully — holding his wife’s hand, winking and waving to his best friend, as he runs out, under his own steam, with a sense of freedom and decency.”
O’Hagan had supported assisted dying for many years, but his experiences with Keith — a friend he had gigged with, ligged with, chanted CND slogans with in 1980s North Ayrshire — sharpened his beliefs and his determination to see it become a reality in Scotland.
Now — two years on — he has agreed to become a patron of Dignity in Dying Scotland, a charity campaigning for a change in the law, so those who are terminally ill aren’t forced to travel abroad in order to take control of their final hours.
“I am not an overtly political animal,” O’Hagan says. “I think it is better for novelists to take in all positions and try to be equal to all. But, in anybody’s life, there are one or two subjects where you want to stand up and say: ‘This is crucial’.” Assisted dying is his.
Before the pandemic, one person every eight days was making the journey from Britain to Switzerland to end their life. “The cost of that, the anxiety of that, the uncertainty of entering into a foreign medical system away from your loved ones, away from your social-care network, is not only taxing, but tortuous,” O’Hagan says.
“We also have terminally ill people trying to kill themselves by means that are not safe; people in lay-bys on motorways, trying to end their lives because the searing pain and the desperate uncertainty is too much for them. They should be able to die on home ground, here in Scotland, well looked after by Scottish medical expertise. This is not just a philosophical question, it’s a question of social and medical wellbeing. It’s a civil right; a humanitarian cause.”
O’Hagan’s decision to become a figurehead for the assisted dying campaign north of the border coincides with an upsurge in support. Recent polls suggest almost 90 per cent of Scots are in favour. The views of the medical profession appear to be shifting, too, with more than half of UK GPs and six in 10 doctors now said to believe the BMA should end its blanket opposition.
Holyrood has been cautious. The last attempt to put assisted dying on the statute books — the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill — was defeated by 82 votes to 36 in 2015. But with other countries, such as New Zealand and Spain, introducing assisted dying acts, and high-profile figures such as TV presenter Prue Leith, publicly backing the policy, Dignity in Dying Scotland is convinced change is possible. A cross-party group on end of life choices has been established, and a fresh bill to legalise assisted dying is expected to be brought in the next parliament.
O’Hagan believes Keith’s experience provides a powerful illustration of why it is necessary. Had the option of an assisted death in Scotland been available to him, he is sure his friend would have taken it. “On one occasion, he was walking down Glasgow’s Great Western Road for a treatment, and he said to me: ‘In a decent place, such as we are and should be more, this would be the day I said goodbye to the world.’
“He realised he had the kind of galloping cancer that was unstoppable and, yes, he could prolong his life for a certain number of months with the use of therapies, but he asked, as a good member of society, what the benefit of that was. It was taxing on the health service, and deeply traumatising to him.”
Keith underwent three rounds of therapy. In late summer 2018, he was best man at O’Hagan’s wedding. But, soon after, he took a turn for the worse and the author and his new wife, Lindsey, cut their honeymoon short. On the day he died, O’Hagan was in Suffolk judging a young writers’ competition. When told his friend had hours to live, he jumped in his car and pointed it north; at Gretna Green, he received a call telling him he was too late. Later, he held Keith’s hand as he lay cold in his hospital bed. “He was peaceful at last, and dignified,” he says. “I only wished he’d been able to reach that dignity with the assistance he craved, and in his own country too.”
O’Hagan made the decision to travel to Switzerland anyway. It was a pilgrimage of sorts; an atonement; a promise not quite fulfilled. “I wanted to take myself through the journey for him,” he says. “It was like driving the hearse past the house where [he] used to live; a way of tipping your hat to somebody’s deepest wishes, to their humanity.” But it was also an opportunity to put any doubts he had over assisted dying to the test. He spent time with the Dignitas director, asking difficult questions. “He answered me point by point.”
Last October, O’Hagan was forced to confront his own mortality when he was hospitalised with Covid-19, an illness he says makes you realise how close to death you are. He has no doubts now. As patron of Dignity in Dying Scotland, he is eager to put his weight behind the new bill. An important part of the campaign will be to ensure those who oppose it are treated with as much respect as he received at the clinic. “We need to understand their fears and worries,” he says. “We must address intellectually, emotionally and with great care, the points they make.
“Let’s not allow this bill to fail by not being able to answer them. Let’s encourage the people who need persuading that there is a great, blinding series of truths to which they might prove hospitable now because in other countries dying with dignity has become the standard, and in those countries they do not see a great abuse of the system.”
O’Hagan is on a crusade. What would Keith make of it, I wonder. There is another passage, towards the end of Mayflies, where a shop owner tells Tully’s friend James: “With luck, you have time ahead of you. And the future will still involve him.” Is his campaign an attempt to keep his friend involved?
“Oh yes, Keith is marching with me,” O’Hagan says. “And friendship itself is a kind of campaign. You link arms over certain things. You keep going forward, you keep making the argument, and you know you have your buddy beside you."
