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Date: 31/08/14
Doon Tae The Wire - Part III: Who DAREs, Wins
(In case you're late to the party, Part I is here. and Part II here)
So, this close to the fateful day itself, what can be said about the campaigns?
Despite promising from the outset that they would seek to make "a positive case for the Union", there has been little from the 'No' campaign to suggest that they have actually done so.
It may partly be due to the arrogance to which I've referred previously, in that they think that they don't really need to make such a case very audibly, and not just because they could rely on a willingly collusive corporate media to amplify any point they cared to make. Inertia is a powerful and often underplayed factor in how people make decisions; to encourage the thought that there is no valid reason for making what is, let us face it, a radical change in the way things are organised has considerable validity as a strategy.
(And it is interesting to ponder on how the tenor of the two campaigns has been diametrically opposite to what an outside observer would have expected at the outset. It would have been perfectly reasonable to expect that it would be the 'Yes' campaign which would have resorted to appeals to history and the emotions - y'know, Bannockburn, Rabbie Burns, and a' that - and that it would have been the Naw-sayers who would have produced the hard-headed, facts-and-figures-laden, dry summation of the arguments. But, if anything, it has been the other way around; it has been the pro-independence side which has been assiduous in researching its case (see Wings Over Scotland again, for example) - even to the point where it might make people switch off - and the Unionists who have concentrated more on the 'shared history' narrative (even to the point of going on and on in a sneering fashion about Braveheart), with the convenient anniversary of the start of The Great War falling near the end of the campaign. This, however, is a dangerous strategem in that it might serve to remind people of the utterly and dangerously fatuous behaviour of the Great British Ruling Class through the ages).
But equally, it may well be down to the thought that, in their hearts, they know that there is very little that is positive to say about the way things have been done so far. All that many people would need to do to ascertain whether the Union was worth preserving or not would be to look out of their windows or walk down the street. There they might see, depending on the time of day: the homeless curled up in shop doorways; or see the young neds out of their wee minds on cheap drugs and even cheaper booze because that's all that they have left to them; or they might pass the front door of one of the increasing numbers of foodbanks where the desperate victims of the deliberately vicious policies of what is, in effect, an alien occupying power (to all of us on this island with remotely civilised sensibilities) gather to find something to feed their families on (so long as it doesn't need to be heated of course, because they can't afford to turn the gas on either). They may see all this, and ponder why it should be so in what is universally acknowledged to be a very wealthy country indeed.
Similarly, they may switch on their television sets and be entranced by television channels which have very little to say about their own lives and those of their communities, but instead concentrate their energies on providing a steady diet of property porn, vacuous talking heads and Epsilon-level celebs, and where the 'lower orders' are deemed suitable for use only as scapegoats, human-zoo exhibits or joke-subjects. And they may wonder whether this is what being 'better together' is all about, a carnival of conspicuous consumption and triumphant trivia.
And again, they may open their newspapers and read stories which are not remotely intended to inform or educate, merely to titillate (frequently, even today, with a capital 'Tit') or to supply a daily diet of concentrated confirmation bias for those who already know what's wrong with the bloody country, and that all that needs doing is to shun the poofs, put all the 'PC Brigade' in prison camps, tell Johnny Foreigner to piss off, and send all the wogs back to where they came from, and there we shall all be (or, at least, those who don't fall into the above categories) in The Golden Future. A reflection and a reflector of a society pretzel-bent by prejudice and avarice, gawping in admiration at the hyper-favoured flaunting their wealth like a pervert flashing his dick (and with the same combined impulses of "Look what I've got!" and "Screw you!"), reading headlines like "My £2.5 million yacht was an absolute bargain!". And they may pause to ask themselves whether this is any way for a civilised society to behave. And whether this really is as good as it gets.
Or, to sum up in the words of a member of the audience for the second of the thoroughly meaningless debates between Salmond and Darling, "If we're Better Together, why aren't we better together now?"
There have also been times without number where one has gained the inescapable impression that the 'No' campaign is in fact being run by undercover agents of the 'Yes' campaign. Either that, or it is in the control of a far-East betting syndicate and under clear orders to 'throw' the game. Because there have been so many unforced errors, so many mis-steps, so much misjudgement of the public mood, that they cannot be accounted for by considering their purveyors as being stupid, because they most emphatically are not. People who are sufficiently intelligent to shin up the shitty pole of Career would be perfectly capable of knowing whether a course of action would redound to their advantage or not. And yet it has so often seemed that they don't know something so basic. So it is that sections of the population whose support might be deemed crucial to getting the desired result are either ignored, insulted, dismissed or patronised all the way over to the other side of the argument.
This almost certainly has something to do with the nature of the people involved on the pro-Union side. For these are largely people from the poltical, economic and media élite; MPs, MSPs, 'Captains Of Industry', metropolitan hacks, television presenters, faded pop icons and the like. In other words, inhabitants (figuratively if not physically - hello, 'Sir' Paul!) of the London bubble, that curious and suppurating boil which covers the area reaching from London W12 via London EC1 all the way to London SW1A (see a pattern here, boys and girls?), and which spreads its infection over the rest of us. The insulated nature of their lives can be the only remotely generous-spirited explanation for the cack-handed nature of their campaign, their tin ear for the music of actual human persuasion (as opposed to mere shouty finger-pointing and trumpeting PR), and for their apparent inability even to understand the ways of thinking and the social outlook of the people whom they are, after all, supposed to be trying to persuade to their point of view.
This is not to say that the 'Yes' campaign can escape criticism. The style has sometimes been too abrasive (see Wings Over Scotland again, although by and large Stuart Campbell has kept his powder dry for the most deserving targets), occasionally too lofty or a bit too dry. Also, it may have been a mistake to let Alex Salmond have any prominent part in it (although, as First Minister, there would have been little choice in this); Salmond is a Marmite politician in that, for every voter who thinks he is an honourable man with the interests of the people of Scotland at heart, there is at least one other who thinks of him as a smug, patronising twat. This is why the 'No' campaign have tried (and to some degree succeeded, it must be admitted) in making the debate very much about him, and have targeted him for a degree of attention which has often spilled over into outright personal abuse, like a group of sinister stalkers.
However, one of the most remarkable things about the 'Yes' campaign is how little it has been to do with the SNP leader, or indeed his party. It was probably recognised very early on that making Salmond a lead figure in the battle would be of limited utility, which is why his deputy Nicola Sturgeon has been far more in the public eye, more prominent even than Dennis Canavan, who is (at least nominally) the leader of the main pro-Independence group Yes Scotland.
But these and the fiery Tommy Sheridan aside, the truly remarkable and heartening thing about the 'Yes' camp has been its great diversity. Both under and outwith the umbrella of the official campaign, there are groups, factions and - bearing in mind that this is the UK's first real internet-age electoral campaign - Facebook pages for military veterans, Asians, English people, health-service workers, artists, sportspeople, LGBTs and even (and this made my eyebrows levitate) members of the Orange Order; all in favour of independence for the land in which they have their being. I can't help but feel that this really has changed the nature of the political culture in Scotland for good, and which - win or lose - is not likely to fade away, Indeed, it may have an energising knock-on effect on the way people seek to do things south of the border as well.
The argument for Scottish independence is really fairly straightforward: does a nation - any and every nation - have the right to determine its own future by its own lights, or not? Anything beyond that consideration is trivial by comparison, something which could be worked out by negotiation or discussion within the basic framework of national sovereignty and that nation's relationship with the rest of the world.
That may be why the 'No' campaign, perhaps recognising the futility of being seen to oppose so basic and universal a principle, has sought to bog the debate down in minutiae, in seeking to reduce the allure of independence by raising potential issues which, whilst plausible at first sight, stand revealed in short order to be no obstructions at all to the fundamental change which is at the heart of the campaign. And so, the Naw-bobs yap on about the currency, about the EU, about the currency, about the BBC, about the currency, about NATO and about the currency; all suitable items for the agenda after the Referendum, but comparatively insignificant in the face of the broad notion behind the vote itself.
At the risk of seeming as if I should be doing this next bit with the assistance of a PowerPoint™ slideshow, I think that the general principles behind independence for Scotland can be summed up by the word:
DARE
Democracy: the people of Scotland would be governed at all times by administrations that they have chosen, rather than ones set over them by the 80 000 or so 'swing voters' in the 'key marginals' (most of them in central and southern England) who - under Westminster's irretrievably bent electoral system - determine the outcome of every UK election.
Accountability: if the government that they elect screw up - through incompetence, indolence or corruption - then the people of Scotland can remove that government without having to rely on handfuls of people in Crawley, Basildon, Kenilworth or York to do it for them.
Responsibility: when things go right, the people of Scotland and their government can celebrate the success (without their suddenly being transmogrified from being Scottish to being Something Else as a result). Similarly, when things go wrong, then it will be for the people of Scotland and their government to shoulder the responsibility of putting it right (and without being 'demoted' to being 'merely' Scottish at the same time).
Empowerment: independence - and only independence - will give the people of Scotland the power and control that they will need to put things right, or to make sure that once set right, they stay right.
In conclusion then (and I promise to try to make this my last word on the matter until after September 18), the vote in Scotland is about the re-establishment of a principle which - if it ever did have deep roots on this island - is in desperate need of being invigorated and placed at the centre of our discourses; that the people should be sovereign, and that power should flow from them and be used for the greater benefit and the advancement of a good, compassionate, humane society, one built by and for people rather than one built over them by other entities who do not often have their welfare at heart.
The 'No' campaign has been underpinned by two stock phrases upon which they have based their every utterance. From its Scottish sub-branch, the phrase has been, "Naw, ye cannae! Naw, ye cannae! Naw, ye cannae!", and from its puppet-masters in London, the message has been, "We won't permit you! We won't permit you! We won't permit you!". September 18, 2014 is the one chance that the people of Scotland are ever likely to get to respond to such sour arrogance in the only way a confident people can, with a cry of, "Yes, we can! And who the hell are you to say what we are permitted to do in, and with, our own country?"
The thought that such a negative, niggardly and dishonest campaign might still win, and that those creeping around behind it might be allowed to continue to blight the lives of so many with their arrogance, privilege and sense of almost divine entitlement is - for all of us who still hold to the notion that there must be better than this - too depressing a prospect to contemplate.
So go on, Scotland! For all of our sakes - I DARE yez!
