When the Scottish Parliament meets, its ceremonial Mace is placed at the heart of the debating chamber. Business cannot begin until it is there.
Inscribed on that Mace are four small words with very big ambitions: integrity, compassion, justice and wisdom. They were chosen to capture the kind of public life Scotland should strive for – whatever the issue, whatever party is in power.
This project, Scotland’s 4 Words of Hope, starts from a simple question: what would it look like if we took those words seriously again?
The Mace itself was a gift to the new Parliament in 1999. It was designed not just as a symbol of authority, but as a reminder of responsibility. Authority can be claimed; responsibility has to be accepted. Integrity, compassion, justice and wisdom spell out the responsibility that comes with making decisions on behalf of others.
They are there to remind every MSP – and, by extension, all of us – that how we do politics matters as much as what we decide.
So why these four words, and why now?
Integrity asks whether we are being honest – with ourselves, with the facts, and with each other. It calls out double standards and quiet corners where one thing is said in private and another in public. In a time when trust in politics is fragile, integrity is about more than avoiding scandal. It is about building the basic confidence that what we are told is grounded in reality, not just convenience.
Compassion insists that decisions are never just about numbers on a page. Behind every policy are people: families, carers, workers, neighbours, those whose lives rarely make the headlines. Compassion does not mean that every decision will be easy or that there will be no hard tradeoffs. It does mean we refuse to look away from those who are most affected, especially when they have the least power to be heard.
Justice asks who benefits, who carries the cost and whether that balance is fair. It looks at the patterns beneath individual decisions – the longstanding inequalities, the gaps in opportunity, the communities that feel left behind. Justice does not promise that everyone will be treated identically, but it demands that everyone is treated with equal dignity, and that we are honest about the impact of what we do.
Wisdom invites us to slow down, look ahead and admit what we do not yet know. It resists the temptation to chase the next headline at the expense of the next generation. Wisdom listens carefully, draws on a range of experience and expertise, and is prepared to revisit decisions when new information emerges. It reminds us that complex problems rarely have simple answers – and that pretending they do can cause real harm.
Taken together, these four words offer Scotland something rare in public life: a shared language that already belongs to all of us. They are not the property of any one party, campaign or belief system. They are literally written into the daily life of our Parliament.
Our Goal
Scotland’s Four Words of Hope is about lifting those words off the Mace and putting them back into our conversations, our choices and our politics.
It is an invitation to candidates, voters, organisations and media to “Face the Mace”: to ask how integrity, compassion, justice and wisdom might shape what we say yes to, what we say no to, and how we disagree along the way.
Photo by Sean Munson